I propose that there is a strong link between our labels of behaviours and conditions – for example, depression, schizophrenia, bi-polar etc. – (the descriptions of the behaviours that we refer to as mental illness), and our belief that the family is the entity that is responsible for our healthy growth and emotional well-being.
Perhaps a reason for the labelling is our reluctance to consider mental illness to be rooted in emotional distress. Would a connection between the two introduce the possibility of the appalling vista [1] that somehow or another our family of origin might not have done its job properly?
An aspect of the family that many of you may have noticed is that members are almost always quite open talking about physical illness but what people call mental illness is sometimes hidden, and rarely talked about openly.
We might use expressions like ‘he’s taken to the bed’ or ‘her nerves are at her’, or not talk about it at all. This may be changing slowly in recent decades but it is still prevalent enough.
And why is mental illness, and all that goes with it, hard to talk about?
Mental illness invariably brings distress to a family, and may cause embarrassment, because people who are mentally ill often behave in ways that ordinary people are suspicious of, fearful of, look down on, or think is strange.
There are very powerful forces operating in society that compel us to conform to certain norms, and people who are deemed to be mentally ill (or even eccentric) may do things that challenge these forces.
And if we consider behaviour that causes distress to self and others to be an illness we can get someone else to diagnose what that illness is and then treat it, handing over responsibility for getting better to an expert practitioner. This, usually, avoids any examination into the dynamics of our family that might have contributed to the condition in the first place.
Perhaps, in Ireland, where, in the middle of the last century, we had a higher number of people in mental asylums per head of population than in the Soviet Union, there is particular shame attached to the topic because of the high esteem we hold the family and its status in society.
Another aspect of mental illness is that, unlike physical illness which can usually be treated and cured, mental illness seems to go on forever [2].
I don’t believe that this is confined to modern thinking.
People throughout history, (in the Western World anyway) who displayed behaviours other than those acceptable to the majority of the population were usually thought either to be mad or bad, and had to be fixed, derided as idiots, or thought to be evil and punished severely. (If you know of societies where such people were considered by the mainstream to be in emotional pain and were offered love and understanding I’d be very interested to hear of them).
Even the slang term for psychiatrist (the person responsible for the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness), shrink, implies that the process that one undertakes to become mentally well isn’t going to be expansive, creative or nurturing!
It is probable that research has been done on the links between anti-social behaviour in youth and mental illness in adulthood.
From my own experience I would say that there is a very strong link. I know many adults who engaged in anti-social behaviour in their youth who now, as adults, trail from doctors to health centres to psychiatric hospitals to out-patient clinics back to doctors, living lives of total dependence on either the State or their family or a mixture of both and all the time under (sometimes quite heavy) medication. Many have spent time in prison. This cannot be a coincidence.
(And when I think of all that, I wonder what the pharmaceutical industry would do if we all suddenly started taking responsibility for healing our emotional distress into our own hands)?
Getting back to our description of acute distress, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) may come a little closer than the professionals, calling alcoholism (and addiction in general) a family disease. Using the word disease [dis-ease], and linking it with family, implies that the members of the family might not be at ease with each other.
I consider the term family dis-ease an interesting description as I believe that the hallmark of a good enough family, through all the ups and downs and emotional roller-coaster that is family life, is that members can be, in general, at ease (i.e. forgiving, tolerant, compassionate and accessible) towards each other, and with each other.
While AA is very strong on personal responsibility, it does not imply that one member has an illness as such. And is it not also interesting that AA, imperfect as many people claim it is, has a strong belief in peer support and is largely run by ordinary people and not health professionals?
I will be mentioning the differences between our approaches to healing physical illness and healing mental illness in various parts of the website. (And just to mention, in this website, mental illness will generally be termed emotional distress, for reasons that will become clear as you read on).
[1]. This expression was used by the late Judge Lord Denning in England during the trial of the Birmingham Six, when it was suggested that they were innocent. If they were innocent, it threw up the appalling vista that the police had told lies.
[2]. As far as I am aware, in many countries, once a person is diagnosed with a mental illness the medical profession state that they have it for life.