facing emotions

  As sad as it was, it was reported that Naomi Judd passed away from mental illness. My first thought was, must be suicide. That was confirmed the next day by other news services, ones less politically correct. There is no accounting for the thoughts of others and the choices they make. Over the centuries the best we can do is, talk to them. That is the basis of psychotherapy. A trained professional talking to people that require mental health services. The list is a long one, the list of diagnosis that is. In actuality it is a list of emotions that we may experience. Those emotions/feelings as a mental health issue are occasionally removed from the list, think all this gender identification stuff. Wasn't long ago when boys that thought they were girls had a mental illness. But the professionals have been retrained and that is no longer the case. 

 Another avenue of treatment is medication. The plan there is not to cure the disease rather create a false one. That's the way I see that anyway. The introduction of a substance to alter your state of mind. I would agree it works in the short term, it's a patch. It's not a cure though. I believe the cure must come from the person themselves. Yes, a trained professional is an important piece in that, possibly being placed in an institution as well, but the cure is in the person's mind. That's my thinking anyway. 

 It's interesting to note that the same professionals that define what mental illness is also say, there is no cure for mental illness. All there is, is treatment. At best you will remain mentally ill but not require treatment. So, what they are saying is, we are all mentally ill, it's just that most of us do not require treatment. I concur with that diagnosis. Mental illness only occurs when a person acts contrary to the social norms. That's when we say, you're crazy. It's the last-ditch effort to explain a person's actions or choices. When there is no other explanation, it's mental illness. 

 In the past there was a stigma associated with mental illness. Those suffering from that were often treated very poorly indeed. Thankfully we have made advances in understanding that and treating the symptoms. Either through therapy or chemicals we are able to alter the person's state. Now it's a good thing that the stigma is being removed but it shouldn't be replaced with normalcy. That is to say, it's normal to have a mental illness. 

 It isn't, if it was you wouldn't need treatment. Treatment that the professional tells us will never cure you. A bit of a quandary wouldn't you say? With the announcement of Naomi Judd, I heard this: suicide is a bad thing, but dying of mental illness is not. Then it's not the fault of the person that choose to do that. Suicide carries a stigma with it that we don't want to acknowledge or admit. Suicide is mental weakness. A tragic choice made by another that we can never understand. It's disturbing anytime we hear of someone committing suicide. Makes us all feel helpless. We feel that weakness as well. But let's not attempt to gloss that over with new terms, with changing the name to make ourselves feel better. To desensitize that emotion. That is how mental illness begins. 

 All of this is simply my thoughts on the topic. I hear things like that statement, she died of mental illness and recognize a change. The older I get the subtleties in attitudes become more obvious. There is a commercial on television that talks about becoming your parents. I'm becoming my grandparents! I tend to speak in a more straightforward fashion and express ideas that seem to have faded from the general public. What is common sense and logic to me has become foreign to some. I call it the acceptance of reality. It is what it is.