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I’m generally against diagnosis except in cases requiring immediate medical intervention which only trained professionals with access to special medical technology can perform. Neurodegenerative diseases, heart and other organs impaired functions, cancer; generally physiological conditions requiring special treatment. There are other milder conditions such as high cholesterol for which I think diagnosis is beneficial. Not for the sake of medicating them with statins which are proven to cause a lot of damage, but to raise the awareness of the person of the need to change their dietary and lifestyle habits, which if continued, will endanger their life. Informing a person as to the damage they do to themselves through their unhealthy habits is a god start in their recovery. It places the person in a position of an informed choice. Once they know that their habits cause them the imbalance, with the help of the specialists educating them into a healthier diet and life hygiene, they can take better care of themselves.
Unfortunately, especially in the mental health field, the diagnosis model of medicine and therapy exclude the person’s social aspects from the equation, focusing mainly on the symptom as a standalone entity, giving the person the false belief that once the symptom there, they are simply its victim, and the only ‘saviour’ is either the chemical drug or the ‘evidence-based’ approved therapy for that type of ‘disfunction’. Their socio-economic position, their lifestyle, their family circumstances, their lack of personal academic, emotional, and spiritual education are edited from the diagnostic model and treatment.
Like any good invention, diagnosis is a double-edge sword. Like a knife, or fire, it could be used to save and sustain life or to endanger it.
The positive side is that it gives the person awareness and choice. Before a person is diagnosed with depression or any mental health condition, for example, the person lives thorn internally, ashamed of their sufferance.
The negative side of medical diagnosis is that it takes away the power and responsibility from the sufferer, distributing the responsibility to factors out of one’s control, such as genes or other physiological factors, and the power to the specialists. If they are unwell, is not their fault; if they get better, is thanks to the drugs and the specialists.
The apparent good intention of destigmatising mental illness by introducing the comparison with “a cold or a flu” or “with any physical illness” is one of the darkest, most nefarious attempts of psychiatry of gaining equal power over your mind and emotions as their medical colleagues have over your body. If your emotions and thoughts are out of your control, they must be in theirs. Without the meds they prescribe, you’ll be subjected to the toils of being human.
In this case, diagnosis for the sake of prescribing drugs is the dark side, the life-endangering side of the sword. It is the knife used to cause fear, to submit, control and endanger life, not the one used for cooking your meal. Your meal is cooked by them, and you become the meal!
There are rules and exceptions in all aspects of life. When it comes to mental health, to health and wellbeing in general, my first rule is diametrically opposed to that of the medical model. My number one rule is that we need to cleanse and harmonise our inner and outer environments, to do our inner work and inner revision first, before going to seek medical help. Find what’s lacking in our life to make us miserable. See how we contributed to it, what are our warts and lacks before pointing fingers, and then take action to correct it, alone or with the help of a mentor, a coach. Only after this first step of taking responsibility for our life and our states has been dealt with, if the condition hasn’t improved, should we see the doctor.
The exception to this rule is for the highly vulnerable individuals whose fragile or impaired faculties will prevent them from having an agency over their situation: those either too young, too old, victims of a terminal illness, an accident, born with impaired faculties, or those addicted to drugs and alcohol. These are the exceptions which I delegate with priority to the medical field. In the absence of agency, choice, lucidity, soundness of mind, the person cannot change their states. For these exceptional circumstances only, I consider the medical intervention and in same cases drug treatment not only appropriate, but vital.
And even within this category there are exceptions. A person suffering from a terminal illness could choose at any moment to revise their life, their inner world, do their inner spring-clean, forgive, get rid of resentment, take the lesson from that experience and choose to make lemonade from that bunch of lemons life threw at them. The medical literature abounds in unexplained spontaneous healings as a result of a near-death experience or another form of a mystical or transcendental experience.
Unfortunately, for obvious reasons of money and power, the medical model of today’s mental health, of healthcare in general, made the exceptions become the rule, and the rule, the exception. Their first call of action is a doctor and medical treatment, and if that fails, then therapy is suggested, or suggested alongside treatment. But no attention is given to the person’s situation, and no efforts are made to help them improve it or change it to foster their recovery. Because that will require social change!
In this case, the destigmatisation of mental illness and democratisation of the mental health is a luring carrot. It is a balm applied on the eyes of the oppressed to dissimulate the effects of the social inequalities on their health and wellbeing. Is not that you live in an unjust system in which you are a disposable commodity that causes you insomnia, chronic stress, depression, anxiety. It’s your “mental illness which is as natural as a cold or flu”. The intended subliminal association is diabolical! Nr. 1, if it’s a spontaneous event out of your control like a cold or a flu, no need for you to look any deeper to understand its cause. Take a paracetamol or antidepressant, and with “proper specialist intervention” you’re as good as new. 2. No personal responsibility, no agency, no need for personal growth and self-improvement are needed. Therefore, no enquiries into your reality and the soundness of the rules governing it.
It is a bargain between the awakening human and those controlling the game from which the system wins once more. Instead of admitting its transgressions responsible for your illnesses, unfulfilling life and dejected states, through a slay of hand it legalises them under the “mental health rights”, giving you the illusion of living in an egalitarian system concerned with your wellbeing.
You’ve been made redundant and can’t pay your mortgage, became depressed and suicidal? Not to worry! You just caught a mental flu, probably from the workplace before packing your box.
You are overworked and underpaid, constantly undermined and devalued by mean ignorant colleagues or bosses and are feeling depressed? That’s unfortunate. But don’t worry! If your human rights as a sane person have be trampled, as a mentally ill you’ll benefit from special treatment.
You’re a student and became depressed during your studies? Don’t fret! The economic hardship, the corruption within the educational system, the red tape, the brain killing curricula, the ungifted teachers sending you to learn what they are supposed to teach from long lists of self-study, the tight deadlines between the papers submission giving you no time to digest the material to be able to come to your conclusions, requiring of you the computational power of a computer, and the lack of opportunities at the horizon, have nothing to do with it. You’ve caught a mental cold bug which the system is more than happy to help you treat, as long as you are evolved enough to admit having a mental illness.
The destigmatisation of mental illness is dust in the eyes of the seeker for truth and social justice. Is an inconspicuous invitation to relinquish your last resistance to an oppressive system that is nearly done with you. You’ve grown awareness of its game and need to be lolled back into compliance while still producing massive profits for its bottom line. And what better way to discredit the awakening population and push them back into blind obedience than gaslighting them with a mental illness label?
©Gratiela Rosu – Founder of CWS Mental Health Coaching Method®, Author of Conversations with Self, God Has Multiple Personalities – and You Are One; When Angels Weep Man Takes Antidepressants; Ode To Infinite Self, The Great King, The Evil Wizard and The Returning Prince
