If you say "this situation I’m in is making me ill" and you mean it’s giving you cancer or infecting you with MRSA people would say how shocking it is and what can be done about it.
I'm going through some crap at the moment; some of it you may know about and some of it you don't.
I said to someone "it's making me ill" and she, with all the care and concern in the world, replied "yes that’s understandable".
How is it OK to be fucked over by outside entities if it just makes you a bit mad instead of causing tumours?
Hi! Although I'm highly uncomfortable with that way of thinking, I presume that's because mental distress/(extreme) emotional distress is not an illness but it's simply, though regrettably, life. Life entails a certain degree of suffering and suffering is just an inexorable part of the experience of being human. And because it's simply that, it can't really make one ill. One has to bear it and get through it. I suppose, to put it crudely, your interlocutor's statement was nothing more than ye olde hackneyed chestnut (utterly lacking in compassion and empathy): "Shit happens".
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you had to hear that. How sad, how disappointing.
Gitty
If something was deliberately being done to you to cause cancer then it could be prosecuted but as yet no one/body is prepared to legally challenge this, apart from that young woman being made to work in Poundland. It’s not OK or even acceptance when people say that, it’s resignation.
ReplyDeleteEven a friend has said to me something along the lines of yes things will change, you will need to support which to me feels like saying I’ll need to adjust to a life on £67/workfare and supported to live with it. I don’t want to live with it, you don’t want to live with it, none of us do. We don’t want support/understanding, we want it to stop, just like if you’re being bullied, you don’t want to cope better with the bullying, you want it to stop
A lot of people don’t get it, but a lot of people do, especially all of us facing it. Sometimes really decent people don’t grasp what it means, and the fact that this is even bigger than benefits, income, living. It’s also about how our worth and role in society has been smashed apart over the last 18 months. We feel completely different inside and outside our homes in a way we never have before now. Afraid of how we look, dress, sound, what we buy, who we speak to
Gitty, the DSM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders and ICD http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/ does define many types of emotional distress as ‘illness’ - mental illness. Not that I’m an advocate of a medical model of mental health but many people have a mental illness diagnosis whether they like or not.
ReplyDeleteIt’s a fact that mental health service users live about 10 years less than the rest of the population for a number of reasons – the physical treatments cause all sorts of physical health difficulties i.e. diabetes, drug-induced obesity and the diseases associated with that, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis from antipsychotics causing raised prolactin, through to blood disorders and at the worst neurological problems such as Tardive Dysdonia/Dyskinesia. Medications can also impact on cognitive functioning impairing thinking and ability to do things.
Poverty causes ill health – that is a fact, the stress of living hand to mouth with consequential debt over years reduces life span. Prolonged stress impacts on physical health.
Emotional distress irrespective of the above can and does make people ill physically, from being unable to get up and do things with depression through to being at risk from self or even to others because of altered perceptions. Anorexia carries the highest mortality rate of all mental illness.
Self-harm for example is one of the top 5 reasons for acute medical admission.
Self-harm and suicide, are very real and hard consequences of severe emotional distress, to the health service, and to families.
I’ve lost several friends over the years through suicide – they couldn’t bear it, they couldn’t get through it
Hi Joanna! I believe you've misunderstood what I was trying to say. I personally believe that emotional distress can be an illness. I was just trying to give an explanation of why someone, like Aliquant's friend/acquaintance, would say "That's understandable".
ReplyDeleteOh sorry! understood
DeleteI don't think there's any debate to be had about what does or doesn't constitute "being ill". I said that the situation(s) I am in is (are) making me ill; that's enough I think. I could've said that the situation is exacerbating existing conditions, or I could've said that I'm becoming unwell due to whatever... it doesn't matter how I phrase it, the point is that I have said "it is making me ill" not that "it's upsetting me a bit and I'm a bit sad". Big difference.
ReplyDeleteI must add that the point of the blog post was not to pick apart what my friend said; she meant in in a very genuine way and I was grateful at the time for her offering her support. I did speak with her before posting this and explained why I was using what she said as an example of a much more widespread issue; she was fine with it and understood.
The point was that even from someone who is caring, who understands mental health difficulties/unwellness/distress/whatever the cool kids are calling it these days, it's just so ingrained that situations and life are going to make distress/illness worse, it's acceptable.
Example one [smaller scale]: My heating is broken, and I'm being generous if I say that those responsible for fixing it have been both incompetent and ignorant. If I contracted hypothermia over the winter, they would've been in trouble and answerable to some legal procedure somewhere. Instead, it's contributed to a spell of increased madness which has knocked me sideways and almost killed me. But it's "understandable", it's OK that I'm going to get ill from it because surely it's only a few tears and tantrums and then it'll all be over, right? It's not as if it'll have any long-term effects or put my life at risk or anything serious...
Example two [bigger crappier stuff]: The current government is hell bent on removing as much financial support and other services from sick/disabled/whatever the cool kids are calling it these days/ people as possible. It's contributed to a spell of increased madness which again has knocked me sideways and almost killed me. If David Cameron himself had come to my home and beat me to death with a baseball bat, he would be in deep trouble. But instead I'm attacked and persecuted via his government, the media, the general public, and it's acceptable because it's just madness. No tumours, no broken bones; it must be my own reaction to it that's the trouble, right? It's all in my own head therefore it must be my fault. It's invisible [not to mention unglamorous], therefore it doesn't matter. And if I die as a result, well, "she was always a bit crazy anyway, not our fault".
Massive amounts of money spent on anti-stigma campaigns. Celebrities "coming out" as being loony as if it's some kind of status symbol; never heard Kylie referred to as "coming out" about her breast cancer or Amanda Holden "coming out" to having lost all those babies. People in high-up positions within companies being pushed out due to their mental health, people who know their rights and know how to fight for themselves yet still being pushed out. NIMBYism of the worst kind where mental health services are being campaigned against "we don't want that sort round here, we know they need to be rehabilitated and they need to live somewhere... but not here". And ordinary people thinking it's acceptable - unfortunate, but acceptable - for their friends to become increasingly unwell as a direct result of outside entities, be they heating repair companies or the mighty Cameron himself.
Time to change, time to talk, time to run carefully-worded surveys where the only possible outcomes are positive... waste of time, waste of money, more damaging than doing nothing at all.
But it's OK, because it's not cancer or hypothermia or broken legs so it doesn't matter.
We’re an acceptable cost. When I say I might lose my home the answer can be that is the price I have to pay for ‘progress’ without even a seconds consideration of maybe I’m really distressed at the prospect of being placed in temporary accommodation which I’ve seen firsthand. It can be shitty B&B and ‘temporary’ can mean years not weeks. There is a distinct societal hardening of attitudes but this hasn’t been helped by government divide & rule tactics – highly effective though. I’ve even seen people’s suicidality sneered at within so-called lefty papers. I sometimes feel that there are people out there who would offer to euthanize if they could away with it.
ReplyDeleteShort version: no it's not OK, not it's not acceptable, yes it does matter.
ReplyDeleteLonger version:
Having disruptive external influences over which you have no control can mess with your health. It doesn't matter if that's building/ plastering work in the home of someone with asthma, or multiple workmen (with unreliable work patterns) in the home of someone with mental health issues, or repeated workmen coming to fix something and it still isn't fixed after several months. It is 'perfectly understandable' that such disruption (and incompetence) will bring additional stresses, exacerbate existing conditions, tip you over the edge, make you ill. It being perfectly understandable that the external influences will have a negative impact on physical/mental health does not in any way shape or form make it OK or acceptable. It is a consequence of the circumstances, but much of the impact was actually predictable and avoidable with just a little forethought/ planning by those who brought the disruption. [This all assumes that the works are necessary and unavoidable - that's another can of worms that I'm not opening here.] There are ways to minimise the impact. Good project planning would be a start. Clear communication would help too. Sensible precautions when making dust would help - I find a good vacuum cleaner used simultaneously with a drill works marvels. It is absolutely not acceptable that a landlord who knows you have mental health issues including OCD (and knows you need ready access to hot water) would fail to take your needs into account when planning works - and would let this situation continue for months on end (mental torture, anyone?). Would they let the home of a young family go without heat and hot water for months on end? I think not!
None of this is your fault. None of it was your responsibility. But you're the one left trying to cope with it - just because someone else didn't think/ plan properly. It is inexcusable.
I hope you feel better soon xx