Monday, December 19, 2011

Lili's thought for the day

If you think that a heightened level of awareness of mental illness, with the successful selling of the idea that it can affect anyone anytime can only be a good thing, consider the hazards of living in a world in which everyone is considered insane till proven otherwise - a murder can be written off by police as a suicide even in the absence of any existing diagnosis or warning signs, doctors working in under-resourced hospitals can send cases that look like mental illness off to the psychiatry department as a first response instead of spending time and resources investigating the problem as a physical illness, difficult children, neglected children and kids with special needs can be diagnosed as having a mental illness and medicated into an inert state, accidental or negligent deaths can be wrongly explained as the work of a unhinged mind and not properly investigated, legitimate complaints of all kinds and all situations can be dismissed as nothing more than a paranoid personality at work, and you or I or someone you know could be accused of doing any manner of batshit insane thing if it suits the interests of employers, family, police, the government, insurance companies or any agent who has to come up with an explanation for some situation.

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