Medicine's big new battleground: does mental illness really exist?

[fizzgig]

147. i triaged for years

the panic attacks, the mood swings, the meltdowns. just therapy or nothing at all.

the harder i tried to keep it under control by myself, the harder it became to manage. everything compounded.

i'm not tony soprano. i don't murder people. i don't maim them. i do not do horrible things.

my childhood was better than many.

even after my life ceased to be a complete shit show, after i started eating rather than drinking my dinner, i still had my illness.

i have an illness. no one is arguing that environment or circumstance do not have an affect on mental health. yes, there are pill happy doctors. however, mental illnesses are physical diseases, and vary greatly. there isn't just one mental illness. anxiety is different than depression, which is different than schizophrenia, which is different than ocd.

we manage our medical condition with medication just like someone with a "physical" illness. the fact that mental illness is still considered a separate class of sickness than "physical" diseases like cancer or diabetes continues to keep us an other, to delegitimize our conditions, our lives.

while there is still socially accepted stigma attached to being labeled "mentally ill," that stigma has lifted greatly over the last few decades and more people are willing to seek treatment.

my medication makes me well. my brain isn't spun up to a million miles an hour now, thoughts of self doubt and the absence of self worth no longer ping ponging inside my brain.

i like myself now. i don't necessarily like everything about my life, but i am comfortable in my skin rather than crawling inside it.

why would you begrudge relief to the sick simply because one evil fuck on a tv show decided to take medication rather than stop being an evil fuck?