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RE: 25% of the British are Mentally Ill (UK Chief Medical officer)
January 16, 2015 at 6:18 am
(This post was last modified: January 16, 2015 at 6:21 am by robvalue.)
Yep, I'm mentally ill too. Depression, making me want to kill myself every day. I used to also have crippling anxiety, but I have managed to get that under control.
I have no idea if 25% is accurate, but I wouldn't find it too surprising.
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RE: 25% of the British are Mentally Ill (UK Chief Medical officer)
January 16, 2015 at 9:29 am
(This post was last modified: January 16, 2015 at 9:48 am by Newtonscat.)
In the early 90s MIND published an article by a psychiatrist in which he said that no matter how bad a person's life is, no matter what pressure they are under, they do not become mentally ill. They may develop mental health problems - but mental illness is a biological condition separate from mental health issues produced by life experiences.
In 1999 the Surgeon General of the United States declared:
All mental illness is biological.
Classifying mental health problems/issues as mental illness is a dangerous path to follow because it will lead to an increase in prescription mind-altering drug use - as is happening in the UK.
(January 16, 2015 at 6:18 am)robvalue Wrote: Yep, I'm mentally ill too. Depression, making me want to kill myself every day. I used to also have crippling anxiety, but I have managed to get that under control.
I have no idea if 25% is accurate, but I wouldn't find it too surprising.
One day, in 1962, when I was 19, I was walking along the road worrying about my life. A thought passed through my mind to kill myself. Five minutes later I felt great. My body relaxed and a smile came on my face. For a week I happily went to the library to research how to kill myself. I slept well. I socialised with others in a way I hadn't done for years. I read that 20 aspirins would kill me .. so I took a 100.
My stomach rejected them and I went to a hospital and told them what I'd done. They didn't believe me (their logic was, I surmise, that if I'd taken a 100 aspirins two hours earlier I wouldn't be standing there talking to them). I got no treatment ... but they detained me. I got sectioned. The psychiatrist told the hospital that I had "suffered from a delusion that I'd tried to kill myself." 'Suspected schizophrenia' went into my medical records. I was out of the mental hospital within a month and have never seen a psychiatrist since. But - in 2009 I went to a doctor about a minor physical health problem. The doctor checked my medical records on his computer. This came up:
Age 19 years
Sectioned
Suspected schizophrenia
No definite diagnosis
The doctor gazed at it for a few seconds ... then began talking to me as if I was mad.
A lot of doctors (here in the UK at least) think that mentally ill people are mad ... and should be on meds.
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RE: 25% of the British are Mentally Ill (UK Chief Medical officer)
January 16, 2015 at 11:34 am
(January 15, 2015 at 10:52 pm)Stimbo Wrote: (January 15, 2015 at 11:46 am)abaris Wrote: Mentally ill means all mental ailments, including depression and burnouts.
Thank you; you said exactly what I thought when I saw the title of this thread.
I'm no doubt part of that 25%, due to my depression, memory problems and depression. The fact that I've tried to off myself several times probably consolidates that position.
Society should simply drop the term 'Mental illness'. The term 'Mentally defective' is no longer used, eh? When I used the word 'mad' I meant it to be understood that I was suggesting that that is how 'mental illness' is thought about by an awful lot of people in the medical profession. Under no circumstances would I personally be happy to be thought of as having a 'mental illness' by those who had authority and influence over my life. I know what depression is and have my own very effective ways of dealing with it when I perceive that its causing me problems.
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RE: 25% of the British are Mentally Ill (UK Chief Medical officer)
January 16, 2015 at 12:20 pm
(January 16, 2015 at 11:34 am)Newtonscat Wrote: Under no circumstances would I personally be happy to be thought of as having a 'mental illness' by those who had authority and influence over my life. I know what depression is and have my own very effective ways of dealing with it when I perceive that its causing me problems.
I call bullshit on that one. And ignorant bullshit at that. If you've got acute clinical depression, there's no way anyone can deal with it on their own. Before I had it, I thought like you, that I can deal with being depressed, but then I got hit by the real thing.
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RE: 25% of the British are Mentally Ill (UK Chief Medical officer)
January 16, 2015 at 12:31 pm
(January 15, 2015 at 10:52 pm)Stimbo Wrote: The fact that I've tried to off myself several times probably consolidates that position.
I for one, am glad that you are crap at self murder.
You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid.
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RE: 25% of the British are Mentally Ill (UK Chief Medical officer)
January 16, 2015 at 1:12 pm
It's actually a lot harder than you'd think to make a person dead. Overdosing (as I did) often ends up with the body emetically rejecting the lot (as I did, after losing something like a full day). Hanging is quite horrific and if unsuccessful can result in brain damage. Wrist slicing (as I did) takes a lot of desperate courage to cut deeper than attention-seeking shallow scratches but again, if unsuccessful can lead to tendon damage, likely permanent. There are of course more certain methods but they are much more difficult if not impossible to obtain, especially over here.
Additionally, I had and still have one real life person who has been my rock. There was one occasion in particular when I was sitting naked in my empty bath with a piece of broken glass poised over my left wrist. I had just started to press it into my skin when she rang my phone and said she was coming to see me and would be there in about ten minutes. For good or ill, she saved my life.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: 25% of the British are Mentally Ill (UK Chief Medical officer)
January 17, 2015 at 8:56 am
(This post was last modified: January 17, 2015 at 9:00 am by Newtonscat.)
(January 16, 2015 at 12:20 pm)abaris Wrote: (January 16, 2015 at 11:34 am)Newtonscat Wrote: Under no circumstances would I personally be happy to be thought of as having a 'mental illness' by those who had authority and influence over my life. I know what depression is and have my own very effective ways of dealing with it when I perceive that its causing me problems.
I call bullshit on that one. And ignorant bullshit at that. If you've got acute clinical depression, there's no way anyone can deal with it on their own. Before I had it, I thought like you, that I can deal with being depressed, but then I got hit by the real thing.
Like sitting for hours unable to move? Like forgetting that you have a job and should be at work? Like being unable to take your clothes off 'cos you can't remember how? Like being unable to get more than 5 words into a conversation before you lose track of what is being said? Like getting lost a hundred yards from your home 'cos you don't recognise where you are? I've been there.
With some people who are taking anti-depressants its reasonable to say to them: What is it you want that you can't get? or You have to work out to what extent you're the instrument of your own despair.
With other scenarios there's something really deep going on.
The term 'Depression' was highjacked when psychiatric drugs became the rage.
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RE: 25% of the British are Mentally Ill (UK Chief Medical officer)
February 17, 2015 at 10:58 pm
She was probably misquoted or said the wrong thing.
I think what she probably meant was 1 in 4 Brits will experience mental illness at some point in their lives, which is a statistic I've actually heard before and sounds a lot more reasonable.
"Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an airplane" - sarcasm_only
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
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RE: 25% of the British are Mentally Ill (UK Chief Medical officer)
February 19, 2015 at 1:26 pm
That is the correct statistic, of which 85% will be Clinical Depression (as mis-named as the condition is) Bipolar being the next most common with a scattergun of other stuff.
Quote:I don't understand why you'd come to a discussion forum, and then proceed to reap from visibility any voice that disagrees with you. If you're going to do that, why not just sit in front of a mirror and pat yourself on the back continuously?
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RE: 25% of the British are Mentally Ill (UK Chief Medical officer)
February 20, 2015 at 2:51 am
(January 15, 2015 at 8:53 am)Newtonscat Wrote: On the BBC morning news, 8th Sep last, the UK's Chief medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies (reputed to be one of the ten most powerful women in Britain) declared that "One in 4 of the UK population are mentally ill, and 70% are not receiving any help at all". So ... over ten million Brits need help 'cos they're mentally ill. Throughout the interview she repeatedly used the terms "mentally ill" and "mental illness". The interviewer interjected at one point "mental health problems?" ... but this had no effect. Dame Sally carried on trying to convince us that 25% of us are mad. Later I tried to find a copy of this interview on the BBC web site ... it wasn't there - they'd replaced it with a different interview, this one:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29116354
Note how she now stresses "mental Health" and "mental ill Health" - I presume the BBC weren't happy with the original interview.
Three weeks later a newspaper report stated that '38% of NHS staff had reported episodes of mental health problems over the previous 12 months'.
I've observed recently that lots of people in the UK seem to be experiencing: Cognitive impairment, Selective amnesia, Thought disorder, and Paradoxical anger - side effects of psychiatric drugs (especially benzodiazepines).
I'm pretty sure that they've had issues with sperm bank babies with the same dad getting married because so few donors want their identity disclosed. So maybe these inbred kids are to blame
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