The
statistics are jarring: 43.7 million (18.6%) of Americans will struggle with
some form of mental illness each year (NIMH, 2012). Yet the stigmas still prevail within our
everyday conversations: the depressed are “lazy,” the anxious are just “too
high strung,” the anorexics should “just eat,” and the schizophrenics are just “crazy.”
Often, we judge what we can’t understand; we can read the statistics, but
without a personal struggle, it’s difficult to understand that someone who is
depressed can’t simply get out of
bed, that someone who is anxious can’t
just calm down and someone who struggles with anorexia can’t just eat. If only it were that easy – the mental health field
would collapse within days.
It is impossible to
explain in words what it is to struggle with mental illness. The scars
scattered across my skin like a road map of my past would show you the many
years I spent wishing I could stop harming myself, the many months I spent in
treatment for my eating disorder unable to fathom being any fatter and the many
nights I wondered if people would be better off without me. I struggled for
many years and after many therapist visits, stays in treatment and
hospitalizations, I began to lose faith that I would ever get better. My
self-hate came full circle when I began to punish myself for not being able to
recover. I wondered what it was within me that caused me to self-destruct
rather than help myself.
Fearing that no one would
be able to help me, I began to search for answers. I very quickly learned that
there isn’t one simple solution. This
both terrified me and comforted me: though it was terrifying that I was being
treated by a system that didn’t have a definitive way to “cure” me, it also
meant that these struggles were not my fault.
I quickly learned that it was not a matter of will power, but of recalibrating
my serotonin, noradrenaline and even hormonal levels. I became inspired to jump
into the field of clinical neuroscience, to be a part of the group of people
that were searching for answers. As I begin earning my Master’s in Psychology (and
hopefully, one day a Ph.D) I hope to spread awareness
and hope to all of you who are affected by mental illness: whether you or a
loved one is struggling, it is important to have patience through the recovery
process. Why? Because it is not a simple matter of deciding to get better, but
deciding to recover day after day, rewiring your brain while also allowing
medication or other biological treatments to help the process along.
Yes. Biological
treatments. These are biological
illnesses. Just as you wouldn’t blame a cancer patient for his or her slow
progress, it is important to understand the complex changes in biochemistry
that must occur in order to finally feel alive
again. In some cases, known as “treatment resistant” cases, there may not even currently
be a truly efficient way of treating the illness, leaving the patient’s brain
chemistry in an abnormal state. It is so
important to have both patience and faith in those struggling with mental
illness because if there is one thing we do
know about mental illness, it is that a solid support system is correlated with
better outcomes in everything from depression to Parkinson’s disease.
I’m hoping that over the
course of these posts, you will learn about mental illness: signs, symptoms and
the biological components that will help increase understanding for everyone involved – those struggling,
those supporting those struggling as well as the insurance companies who are
currently quite guilty of denying patients in dire need of help the coverage
they need to get better (more on that later!) It will become very clear through
the alterations found in neurotransmitter levels as well as differences in
activity in specific brain regions, that these disorders are anything but a
choice. Hopefully, you’ll find as much hope and passion in all of this as I do,
because once I realized that, just like medical problems, mental illness research
lacks the knowledge to truly know how to help patients, I wanted to dive in. I
wanted to save the future generations from the revolving door of treatment
centers, the haphazard medication process and the unsure faces of doctors,
psychiatrists and therapists. In the future, I hope to be able to help find
more adequate ways of treating mental illness, but for now, all I can do is
inform you of the facts and offer you a little hope.
Having a
mental illness is not a choice, but a
disorder of altered brain chemistry that takes time, patience and effort to
heal.
And if you aren’t quite
as passionate about it as I am, take comfort in the fact that learning
something new increases the gray matter (the cells in your brain which help to
increase the speed of connectivity) in your brain!
In my next post, I’ll
cover the neurobiology of depression!
