Mental health: Why does this topic promise to increase in scope and importance, and why does it help anyone? (7 Final)

(Rodrigo Contrera)

Imagine that your tire goes flat. You have arms, at least. Or your hands. Imagine that your lung starts to have problems. You have the possibility to call someone, asking for help. Imagine that you feel weak in your legs. You can ask someone to give you a ride with your hands. But imagine that you start to see non-existent things. You only have the same mind to try to convince you to fight against what you see or to distinguish between fiction and reality. You have the same mind that forces you to see things that don't exist. He has no other mind.

Mental problems promise to be the biggest obstacles to a good life in the 21st century. Some say because habits and diet slowly lead us to dementia. Others say that depression is inevitable in anyone's life. Others say that psychic problems are not limited to these two. In any case, patients only get worse, in general, and the way of treating them, although standardized, generally does not lead to as good results as would seem natural. Why that? Because the mentally or psychically ill person is still a person who must determine what they want in their life, with their mind totally or partially damaged. In other words, he is the one who has to determine whether he wants to live or die. In other words, he is the one who should facilitate or hinder treatment, depending on your pain and perspectives. No one should ultimately decide his fate, except him. And he is generally dominated by a confused, disorganized, hurt mind, which hurts himself and others, and which often, on a daily basis, leaves him in the middle of the road without knowing where to go. It's similar to someone addicted to alcohol or other drugs.

On the other hand, once you go through and overcome mental illness - as it is in my case -, you can easily distinguish that these people who have never suffered from anything more serious, but who have problematic personalities, may not be normal, or neurotypical. , or simply people in good conditions to decide on their own or others' destinies. We, the sick, realize at a certain moment that many of those who blame us (yes, that's right) or attack us for the illnesses that affect us are probably sicker than us, due to their deviant, excessive, overly demanding and uncompassionate behaviors that they often make us sick. In my place, I am sure that a large part of my disorders I owe to my family, who always blamed me for being different and very sensitive, who never diagnosed my situation as autistic level 1, with ADHD and gifted, who overwhelmed me of absurd demands to solve other people's self-esteem problems, and on top of that it took years for me to believe that I was suffering from an illness, and not acting like a victim or trying to deceive. Are you responsible for my mother and brothers? No. They will continue to think they are right about me, whether they help me or not. In other words, much of the disease's effects on the patient is due to neurotypicals who make others sick and who never understand that the problem has always been more in them than us, the patients. (Today, I avoid visiting my mother at all costs, never speaking to my sister again, and my brother only via email).        

Mental illness, however, is also an opportunity to overcome. It is not just a way of facing terrible challenges and overcoming them. It is a way to better understand what life really is, as well as death. I'll give you a small example: who can imagine a clearer idea of what it's like to gradually lose your life than to gradually or suddenly lose all your memory, as happened to me and many others (I only recovered it after having written more than 5 thousand pages gradually recovering what was left of the events)? Or completely losing emotion, creating simple images of people, which do not correspond to what they are, express or simply suffer before our eyes? Or completely losing sensitivity, no longer having a sense of what pleasure or pain is, whether in food or liquids, or in extreme aggressive situations, such as physical fights? So, when you go through all this and survive, you understand much better why some sick and addicted people, in a certain way, are in different ways more alive and more dead than so-called normal people.

This understanding also brings us a much more aggressive and compassionate view of life. And that is also invaluable.

(Rodrigo Contrera)

Translated by Google Translator