Mental Illness

Thought of the day: Mental illness is real. Not sure if some of you are aware. I recall a time where I was standing next to an officer who suggested that the more frequent spanking of a girl would correct her behavior after she was abandoned by both parents while she was 7 years old. The trauma from that event is real. The effects of the trauma are real. And the fact that the two people who are responsible for shaping this girl, by their actions, told her she was not worth the time of day really does play into the fact that she has turned into a hellion. You cannot hit self-esteem and self-worth into people. The officer is no longer employed as an officer, thank God. I've also heard someone say of another child that spanking would have corrected the behavior. Except the behavior was part of a frustrated reaction by a child in the autism spectrum. Really, you can't spank autism out of a child. Now this is not an anti-spanking TOTD, hooked on spanking worked for me! (Really, for the Greeks, aint one of us who didn't get the koutala). However, there is a time and place. The problem is if that is your only solution, you may be trying to spank a mental illness out of someone. 



I make a lot of my decisions and foster beliefs mainly because of probability. I recall in 1993 coming up with a decision matrix for God (what else was I to do at 16?). I found out a year later, Pascal stole my idea and published it as his own about 370 years earlier (google Pascal's Wager). So too, before I became a part of NAMI (google NAMI :-) and started a lifelong education, it seemed to be very probable that something could be wrong with the human brain. From wikipedia (I don't have my old human biology book anymore or I'd give that citation) "The human brain has a huge number of synapses. Each of the 1011 (one hundred billion) neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 1015 synapses (1 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates vary for an adult, ranging from 1014 to 5 x 1014 synapses (100 to 500 trillion).[11]" - Neuron page.


At this point, people that have an open mind will look at that and think, damn, there are a lot of places where things can go wrong. However, there will be others who still think that bad behavior is strictly a bad-upbringing issue. Now to disclaim: There are children who suck out there. There are parents who suck out there. There are sucky parents who produce sucky children. There are excellent parents who produce sucky children. AND there are sucky parents who produce excellent children. (I'll let you figure our the last combination). I'm not talking about them. 


I don't know if you've heard, but there are children who are born with birth defects. Like three legs, an arm that's half as long as it should be, 1 eye, or http://goo.gl/dvRWR.


If this can happen with the external body. Is it not only possible, but very probably that a child can have 1 of a gagillion of their neurons not form correctly? If you say no, then please unfriend me. :-) Cause fanatics in any religion or opinion are stupid and should suffer dysentery.


Now, if I told you a child was born with two heads, you would generally know what to expect. Not that the site may not shock, but you can at least put together the picture in your head as to what the possibilities are before you EVER see the child.


So, what if I were to tell you that one of the child's neurons did not form correctly. Can you picture in your head what that would look like? Some of you could! Some of you would have absolutely no clue. And for the nocluers, I am glad to say, I'm here for you.


The brain controls every single function of the human body. So, when your nose runs, there is a cause and effect of data travelling to your brain which concludes stuff and decides an effect of action (crap running out your nose). When your lungs fill with air, your brain has concluded that it would suck if they didn't, so they do. It controls whether you have to hold your textbook in front of you when you walk down the hall when you saw, "OMG she's hot" bend over to pick up a dropped pencil. It controls when you are happy. How happy you get. How much control you have over yourself. How much control you have over others. When you get dumped, your brain determines whether you put one step in front of the other or whether "you will show him" and start taking scissors to your wrist. It also determines when you would do that. And what factors play into you doing that. And what the barometric pressure has to be when you do that. What color will set you off to do that. If you have the capacity to do that. And whether you do that before or after your morning shower. If somehow you are more likely to do that if you didn't eat a good breakfast. If interaction or the lack thereof with other people will make you more likely to do that. I can keep going on. It's called infinite. I think a lot of people ignore that in their lives and the lives of others. But life is not lived based on the numbers you can count on your hands. There are an infinite number of possibilities between your fingers. 


So what happens if your neuron that is supposed to work doesn't? What if you were born with 10 neurons that just started work one day and said, "Screw it, the health insurance sucks, the pay sucks," and went on strike.... and never went back to work? Let's hope it's not in your happy place of the brain. Because people will call you lazy. Let's hope it's not in the smart part of your brain because people will call you stupid. Or in your motor control part of your brain cause people will call you clumsy. AND, someone will have the belief that if you had been hit harder or more as a child, that the neurons will simply realize that working is much more fun than striking, will put down there picket signs, and you'll just be perfect.


My point is, you don't know whether bad behavior, lack of control, or any other unacceptable social constructs are due to a child who had a "third leg" in their brain. And the day I'm shown that you can slap diabetes out of someone, I'll believe you can also slap self-esteem into, or mental-illness out of them.


Mental illness is real. And it does not make people evil. Like all adversities, it either makes people victims. or survivors.