Most people who are mentally ill aren't in a good way. Not collectively. We treat our mentally ill poorly overall. Closing American mental hospitals was a rotten start to this century.
From NPR's review about The Great Pretender; the review concludes:
' The Great Pretender is an essential book, and a plea for the world to come to terms with the way we're treating some of our most vulnerable people. "We are all hanging on by a very thin thread," she writes, "and some of us won't survive our fall." '
She's right. :(
In 1992, I was in one of the last mental institutions that got closed: Clinton Valley Center in Pontiac, Michigan.
I was lucky; I had a support system already. I survived not only being thrown into the system by a young doctor and his hospital -- who probably pushed for sending me as an involuntary court-ordered patient -- but I also got better. Back in the 90s, odds were a lot poorer that you'd be able to have anything like the life you'd had before.
I don't "seem sick" to most people. Telling when another person's manic or depressive is HARD. Even for your nearest and dearest, let alone yourself. :(
It's because I'm not sick, I have a mental illness. When I say I am [or was] "sick" it's usually shorthand for "manic" in my personal lexicon.
It took me a few years to leave the mental health/CMH system, compounded by poverty. I fixed that by finishing college and rejoining the full-time work force; until then, I'd income from disability and supplemented it with two student-employee jobs.
Community Mental Health took care of my meds and doctor visits from 1992-97. Far longer than I'd expected to need that assistance, but grateful to have it. I liked to joke that I was "using my Social Security now" during the 90s.
Hey, that's what paying taxes is for, you know!
I completed my undergrad degree via a program called Michigan Rehab Services. :) They made me take it slow -- snail-level slow, in my book! I live by forward momentum, dammit, and doing almost nothing was crazy-making.
The rehab staffers were used to people who leapt back into reclaiming their old lives -- and crashing down again, failing badly -- which was not my problem. I'm sure they thought I was wrong. =big grin= I wasn't.
Still, that is what happened to many many people. "I feel good, I don't need my meds--" then boom; s/he would go manic, depressive, psychotic, etc. :/
I'm high functioning (and high energy) which masks my depressions nearly constantly. My borderline ADHD adds to those aspects too. So I happen to be very aware, not only of my own illness and how it manifests, but how it's affected my life from 1991 onward.
Not everyone is like that.
I'm not hanging by a thread. Not today.
Not depressive; not manic either, thank the Great Maker! I'm partway between them, actually, which is the ideal place to be. I'd like to stay there.
We'll see how it goes, eh? Maybe I can persuade my current doc to listen to me on that -- on needing a secondary med only half the time, and not all the time. Rather than have that med "decide" so to speak that "you must need to be manic!" and try forcing that. Doctors like to mix up medical cocktails they think should keep working forever with a little tinkering.
Not everyone's built that way. I'm certainly not... so and so. And I'd meant to write briefly and stop, so it is time to sign off. :p
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