Wednesday, February 3, 2010

We are everywhere

Here is a commercial (public service announcement) about mental illness that I really like. It is currently playing on TV.



Here's a comment about that video and I particularly agree with:

"This video made me cry the first time I saw it. I have Bi Polar disorder and I DO believe that there's a stigma attached to the term "mental illness." When properly treated, people diagnosed with these conditions are totally capable of living "normal lives." I pray that others come to view mental illness as a medical condition that many people stuggle with...and not as something that defines them."


The above video is from http://www.bringchange2mind.org/ which has the statistic that "1 in 6 adults and almost 1 in 10 children suffer from a diagnosable mental illness."  


.... We really are everywhere ....



During a neuroscience class, my teacher was talking about schizophrenia and compared 'our' brains with those of schizophrenia.

I didn't like the assumption that everyone in the class had normal brains.  I thought, I have bipolar disorder, and isn't there a chance that someone in the class has schizophrenia?  I thought that my teacher's wording would make them feel funny.

Compare a clinically normal brain to an abnormal one, but don't compare us (the students) to them (the textbook examples).  Afterall, people often choose psychology as a major because of their curiosity about what's going on in their own possibly abnormal brain.  And college time is a pretty typical onset time for illnesses like schizophrenia.

No comments:

Post a Comment