Mental illness in New Zealand

[madboy]

I probably should have been diagnosed with something years ago. I don't think it was/is depression (it's not so bad I can't get out of bed) but there are just occasions where I think "WTF happened??!!??". I've been sailing along just fine and then I do something really stupid that fucks everything up. I've either lost or quit countless jobs coz I have no idea why. I dunno whether I'm just a dumb c*nt or what.

You're right - that's not depression.

Society is all about ME. ME ME ME ME ME. And therein lies part of the reason I believe why more and more people are suffering from stress. People are increasingly busier and busier, not taking time out to look after themselves and "de-stress". Concentrating on making sure they're earning good money, then spending it on big houses, cars, boats, bikes, kids... rushing into work late 'cos they had some kid issue, rushing home early to pick up the kids from after school care, in the middle working their asses off to get through what they've got to get through at work, flying through the endless errands they have for themselves or their kids after work, worrying about making the HP payments that are due in a couple of days on the big TV/stereo/computer...

Personally, I commute on my bike for that exact reason. So that I can get some stress relief on a regular basis. I have a highly stressful occupation. If I took it to heart, I'd have a major depressive episode sooner or later. Instead I take reasonable steps now to manage my stress levels to ensure that my chances of this happening are reduced significantly.

[madboy]

Woz DSM-IV ?

Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders - 4th edition. It's produced by american psychiatrists and is used to classify mental illness into various categories.

[Winston001]

Woz DSM-IV ?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States.

http://www.psyweb.com/Mdisord/DSM_IV/jsp/dsm_iv.jsp

Snap Madboy

[Colapop]

You're right - that's not depression.

Society is all about ME. ME ME ME ME ME. ....

Yep, that's it I think. It is about me. And I take responsibility for me and my actions. Although there are those who have legitimate cause to seek professional advice there are too many who are looking for someone else to provide them with an easy fix. Probably the reason why there are so many fast-fitness products on the market.

[Motu]

I guess I am one of the hard line ''toughen up'' ones.In the age I grew up in if you were loopy enough to be a problem you were removed from society never to be seen again...in the ''nut house'' at Oakley.If you were crazy enough to fit in,you did,simple as that.It's possible I have a mental illness,and I'm sure my wife has....and my 4 kids seem to have ''personality issues'' too.As well as being a kid with problems (introverted,stuttering,learning difficulties,socialisation problems) myself,I think half the kids at school were just as crazy as me.As I grew up in our area I gravitaed to hang out with other misfits,antisocial ne'er do well's who seemed to get some therapy riding bikes and working on them.I don't know if I have a mental illness or not,and nor do I care....I can make my way in society,cover my mistakes as I always have and put on a brave face....it's life,enjoy it while it's here....

[Winston001]

Personally, I commute on my bike for that exact reason. So that I can get some stress relief on a regular basis.

Good post. Maybe your travel explains the counter-intuitive research which found that people actually like long commutes to work. Including traffic jams and delays. Respondents to the survey said they enjoyed the time alone.

[Winston001]

I've never really understood depression either , for the same reason. Of course there have been times in my life shit has happened, and I've been down, unhappy, miserable. But I realise that clinical depression is different to this. But, never having experienced it, I can't really understand what it would be like.

Imagine a normal day when inexplicably a feeling of doom comes over you. Or you wake up feeling bad for no reason. It's a bit like a cloud has crossed the sun.

Some people can't see the sun at all. Everything is dark, black.

[BuFfY]

At uni at the moment we are covering diversity in the classroom... looking at the different things that children bring into the classroom and also what we bring with us. But more importantly how we will address these situations in the classroom. Topics like mental illness are hard to discuss in a classroom incase toes are tread on...

For me this issue and all the comments hit close to home... I have experienced a lot of issues concerning this topic considering my age (well I think so anyway). Both my father and sister have suffered from it. Dad couldn't get out of bed for like 2 months because he was so depressed... and he wouldn't talk to us about it... he wouldn't talk to us at all!

My sister is the one that hurts me the most. She is my best friend in the whole entire world and I would do anything for her. She has found it hard to deal with everything we have gone through over the last few years and recently after having a few drinks tried to kill herself. Imagine being 15 and trying to stop your sister from doing this. She locked herself in her room and tried to take a huge amount of pills. Lucky I got in there to stop her.... then she bloody ran away! She has gone through councillors... which were useless and then went to a psychologist. She has been taking anti depressants for years but I don't think this has helped her at all. Through all this she has put on weight which has just lowered her self esteem even more.

Through all this I wanted to be a psychologist... I have the motivation and intelligence to get through the degree but I don't believe I have enough life experience to get me through a normal day.

My real passion is to be a teacher... to try my absolute hardest to make all children feel and want to be all they can be (yep cheesy but its true). Understanding these issues and how they have affected different people is something I need to understand.

In my opinion self-efficacy, not self-esteem, is the most important thing we can develop in anyone we know.

[Ixion]

Blurdy hell. That website is a bit bizarre. Was it written by the trick-cyclists, or the patients?

Starting out reckoning I had half them, cos the symptoms fitted ("Shit, I do that - and that, yeah I sometimes feel like that too - bugger me, I must be right off me tree")

Then I found

Intermittent Explosive Disorder.

and decided the whole thing had to be a pisstake. Intermittent Explosive Disorder? Yeah I reckon intermittently exploding would disorder y' right enough. Wasn't it Groucho Marx who said "You'd have to be crazy to go to a psychiatrist" ? Reckon he had it about right.

Not meaning to belittle the plight of anyone who suffers from such problems,but do the psycho-therapists, and psychiatrists and such actually do any GOOD ?

That psycho-therapy seemed like a lot of New Age waffle from what I read.

We used to say the best doctors were Dr Diet, Dr Quiet, and Dr Merryman. Reckon there's still wisdom in that.

For a prescription, try a good beer 'n steak, a good ride, and a good shag. Bet it does more good thant the psychotherapists.

[BuFfY]

Good post. Maybe your travel explains the counter-intuitive research which found that people actually like long commutes to work. Including traffic jams and delays. Respondents to the survey said they enjoyed the time alone.

And here I was thinking I was the only one who liked commuting to work (well in my case uni!)

[Paul in NZ]

For a prescription, try a good beer 'n steak, a good ride, and a good shag. Bet it does more good thant the psychotherapists.

That and keeping your bowels open!

few things in life as grounding as a totally satifiying grot!

[Hitcher]

That and keeping your bowels open!

few things in life as grounding as a totally satifiying grot!

Seated after breakfast
In this white-tiled cabin
Arabs call the House where
Everybody goes,
Even melancholics
Raise a cheer to Mrs.
Nature for the primal
Pleasure She bestows.

Sex is but a dream to
Seventy-and-over,
But a joy proposed un-
-til we start to shave:
Mouth-delight depends on
Virtue in the cook, but
This She guarantees from
Cradle unto grave.

Lifted off the potty,
Infants from their mothers
Hear their first impartial
Words of worldly praise:
Hence, to start the morning
With a satisfactory
Dump is a good omen
All our adult days.

Revelation came to
Luther in a privy
(Crosswords have been solved there)
Rodin was no fool
When he cast his Thinker,
Cogitating deeply,
Crouched in the position
Of a man at stool.

All the arts derive from
This ur-act of making,
Private to the artist:
Makers' lives are spent
Striving in their chosen
Medium to produce a
De-narcissus-ized en-
During excrement.

Freud did not invent the
Constipated miser:
Banks have letter boxes
Built in their façade
Marked For Night Deposits,
Stocks are firm or liquid,
Currencies of nations
Either soft or hard.

Global Mother, keep our
Bowels of compassion
Open through our lifetime,
Purge our minds as well:
Grant us a king ending,
Not a second childhood,
Petulant, weak-sphinctered,
In a cheap hotel.

Keep us in our station:
When we get pound-notish,
When we seem about to
Take up Higher Thought,
Send us some deflating
Image like the pained ex-
-pression on a Major
Prophet taken short.

(Orthodoxy ought to
Bless our modern plumbing:
Swift and St. Augustine
Lived in centuries
When a stench of sewage
Made a strong debating
Point for Manichees.)

Mind and Body run on
Different timetables:
Not until our morning
Visit here can we
Leave the dead concerns of
Yesterday behind us,
Face with all our courage
What is now to be.

W.H. Auden

[SwanTiger]

Instead I take reasonable steps now to manage my stress levels to ensure that my chances of this happening are reduced significantly.

That is where I believe a lot of people fail and get stuck with mental illnesses. They do nothing about it. Which is why the "Toughen up" and "Get over it" stance has a point.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States.

Fucken Americans.

My real passion is to be a teacher... to try my absolute hardest to make all children feel and want to be all they can be (yep cheesy but its true). Understanding these issues and how they have affected different people is something I need to understand.

Thats a good goal to have.

Lots of mental problems first show when children begin to develop social intelligence. It'd be nice if more teachers showed awareness and took steps with the help of the school and the childs parents to work on strategies of not only supporting the child, but educating them about mental illness.

There are some pretty fucked up kids out there.

I would class as one of the "ignorant sods". Not because I am uninterested, but because it is hard to understand these things withour having had direct experience of them either oneself, or through someone close.

Its not really that hard to understand as we are all humans and for the most part experience everything equally. Its who we are that determins how we react to those experiences and how they effect us mentally and emotionally.

Next time you come into a tricky situation, say for example a traffic jam and are a little peeved about some dickhead drivers. Think about how this would effect a solo parent with a full time job and children, little money and loads of stress that has no release.

Extreme, but you can even take simple things like introducing yourself to someone new. For some people, not just shyness, but actual full on fear of rejection and shit can lead to all sorts of problems, for example depression, at the fact they failed to "socialise" as society expects them to.

[vifferman]

Those ads on TV about these wonderful people who have a mental illness and how they should be given a chance / treated right / not judged make me feel a bit sad, as there is a definite stigma attached to mental illness. While telling those close to you about it can help, that's only the case if they don't judge you or presume to understand when they really don't.

Telling an employer is a very good way to get yourself judged, put on notice, and potentially become even more mentally ill.

Medication can help, or make things worse if it's not exactly right, and even if it IS the best available, it's still a crude 'sledgehammer' treatment for what can be a very complexly malfunctioning organ.

Encounters with condtions such as depression, autism , Aspergers Syndrome and the like make it very clear that there is really no "normal", just a continuous spectrum of the human condition, and if you stray far from the median and from the conventional, things can be very hard for you if you don't get the right breaks.

[Motu]

.
Not meaning to belittle the plight of anyone who suffers from such problems,but do the psycho-therapists, and psychiatrists and such actually do any GOOD ?

That psycho-therapy seemed like a lot of New Age waffle from what I read.
.

My wife comes from a family of crazy people...she's the pick of the bunch and she matches my own mental disorders just fine.One of her step brothers wanted to be an alcoholic when he grew up...by 14 he was being treated for alcoholism,he's 50 this year and we shared a couple of jokes at Xmas...must be a first.There are another couple of alky brothers,and another leads such a life of iresponsability he had $80,000 of fines wiped so he can start again.My wife went to the debue of his new band on saturday night,and she reckons it's the tightest band he's had....most of the family were on stage jamming and singing with him.

Her sister was carted off at 13 to the loony farm in Opotiki.She came out cured with a desire to be a phsycotherapist,and has a sort of ticket in that trade....knows all the things wrong in my head apparently...but I don't want to know.A few months ago she walked away from a $600,000 house,just let the bank take it...even left her clothes there,we had to go and clean up.She went from overweight to stick thin and now really has some health issues....I kinda feel she has some mental health issues too.We had her stay for Xmas,being around in a strong family helped her in some ways...but then made her feel so isolated in others....

Fat lot of good phsycotherapsts do if they can't cure themselves.I have no sympathy for her plight,but she is my sister in law and I will help her in anyway I can,she knows we are all there for her.