Mental Illness: Breaking down the barriers

As an advocate for anyone on Minti who suffers or has family who suffers mental illness I would like to clear up a few things. Firstly there is a stigma surrounding mental illness which perpetuates and causes the illness to be more severe than it needs to be. I believe that people don't understand about the causes of mental illness and fear it for this reason. Many people also don't understand the treatments therefore they don't know that having a mental illness is not a 'death sentence'. Mental illness does not have to limit you for life. As such, I would like to explain a few things about the causes of mental illness, beginning with the complexities of the brain.

Mental illness takes so many different forms:

• anxiety
• depression
• bi-polar or manic depression
• schizophrenia
• ADHD
• epilepsy
• autism and aspergers
• personality disorder
• cerebral palsy

and countless other ailments. In short mental illness can be described as any deviation from normal brain functioning (I apologise to anyone who feels resentful towards me for putting people with cerebral palsy, ADHD, epilepsy and autism into this category - I know some people would disagree. My definition of mental illness is any form of brain malfunction). The human brain is extraordinarily complex. It's made up of white and grey matter which is convoluted into many folds. Different regions of the brain control different behaviours and bodily functions. There are centres for

• emotion,
  
• personality,
  
• intelligence,
  
• movement,
  
• all of your senses (vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste),
• autonomic systems such as your heart, lung and digestive system

Basically, the brain is the control centre for everything that goes on with the body. Imagine the brain to be like a computer existing of hardware (the brain and all it's made up of) and software (the connections between brain cells created by experience and learning). Within each region of the brain, there are nerve cells or neurons which communicate with one another via electrochemical messengers called neurotransmitters. Mental illnesses such as cerebral palsy and epilepsy occur when there is a lesion within the brain. Lesions or damaged parts of the brain affect the behaviour contolled by the place where the lesion occurs. Mental illness can also be caused by imbalances in neurotransmitters thereby causing errors in communication between brain cells. The neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine feature big with illnesses such as anxiety, depression, bi-polar, and schizophrenia. Serotonin is an exciter and dopamine is an inhibitor. The nerves either fire too much or too little. Medications can stabilise these imbalances. More drastic treatments such as electric shock therapy can re-stimulate parts of the brain to fire.

The reason why I thought it might be important to address this is that so many of us are loath to accept that what goes wrong with our behaviour could be caused by problems with our hardwiring. Because the brain is so complex, isn't it amazing that anyone is perfect? Is there such a thing? I myself once believed in "mind over matter", that because you are strong in mind you can be impervious to mental illness.  I found out the hard way that this is not true. . It's cause is 'biological' and neurological along with situational. That is traumatic experiences can also cause mental illness just as easy as a car crash can sever a person's spinal cord rendering them quadriplegic. Stress is traumatic and may arise from any number of things. Loss of a loved one, having a baby, having an accident, marital separation, abuse, so many things in our lives cause stress. Stress leads to another increasingly common and very real illness, depression. Depression is much more than just a social disease. it's not just an excuse for having a bad or sad day. Depression affects the way we look after ourselves and decreases motivation. People with depression lose the motivation to eat properly and in turn have difficulty sleeping. The body becomes deprived of sleep and energy. Medication and counseling can help sufferers get their lives back on track as they begin to look after themselves again.  

As a sufferer, I would like to ensure that people learn and understand about mental illness so that other sufferers don't continue to feel so 'abnormal'. It's okay to have something wrong with your body physically therefore it should be okay to have something wrong with your brain. There is treatment available and people requiring treatment should not feel weak, abnormal, or crazy for seeking help and accepting it. This goes for any form of mental illness, whether that be ADHD, depression, PND, anxiety, bi-polar and so on. Likewise, parents whose children need to take medications should not need to defend their actions. ADHD and autism do arise from communication problems in the brain that can be treated with medication. Treatment of any mental illness involves some medications in conjunction with therapies to assist learning. Only with treatment can many sufferers lead successful and fulfilling lives. No mental illness is a life limiter given the right treatment. Had I continued to fight against psychiatrists who offered me help I would still be psychotic today. I accepted treatment and six months later was weaned off my medication and continue to see a psychiatrist today. I know which life I would prefer.