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Comment by istjohn | Hacker News Reader

Your knee-jerk response to this statistic is symptomatic of the stygma attatched to mental illness in our society. If this was a statistic on a viral infection, would you be so doubtful?

This attitude is what keeps people from being willing to seek help when they suffer from depression or suicidal thoughts for fear that skeptics will judge them as faking or lacking character. As someone who lived for over ten years with multiple undiagnosed mental disorders and suffered significant, unnecesary setbacks as a result, I believe we still have a ways to go before mental health is treated with the appropriate amount of concern.

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I think you misread my comments. I am just saying that when a fairly large percentage of the population is considered 'mentally ill' then they're probably not ill at all, they're just having a perfectly reasonable response to a completely screwed up society. I mean objectively the binary view of "sick" and "healthy" is wrong for starters. Also objectively, many societies don't have these issues or at least don't have these issues to nearly the rates that the US or Japan does... what does that you tell you about so-called (capitalist) "development" in a society? Maybe something, maybe nothing. You be the judge. Not that anyone asked, but I personally believe the whole antidepressant epidemic in the US (and other places, like Denmark, the self-reported happiest country on earth) is a symptom of a fundamental breakdown in the community aspects of society and a pervasive, deep-seated sense of mental rudderlessness infecting the more vulnerable parts of the population (lower socioeconomic status, indebted/mortgaged workers, isolated lifestyle individuals, the elderly) as a result.

> the whole antidepressant epidemic in the US (and other places, like Denmark, the self-reported happiest country on earth) is a symptom of a fundamental breakdown in the community aspects of society and a pervasive, deep-seated sense of mental rudderlessness infecting the more vulnerable parts of the population

That causes damage. Turning your ankle or pulling a muscle might be more obvious, because it's purely physical, but there isn't as much difference as you think.

There have been studies that show that long term unemployment causes permanent changes to a persons personality, one not easily healed by getting a new job[1]. These modifications to thinking and increased stress levels lead to physical changes (and argumentatively decay). Pointing out the source of the problem in society does not change the fact that it isn't mental illness. Quite on the contrary, giving a source is similar to pointing at a poisoned well and saying "That's why everyone is sick.", but then afterwards saying nobody is really sick because we all know the well is poisoned.

[1]: http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/02/25/long-term-unemployme...

Your analogy about the poisoned well is good, but I think what you're missing is that, I believe, the OP's point is that merely treating people with mental disorders is not the right solution. In your well example, if you have a poisoned well making everyone sick, the solution is NOT to treat everyone for poisoning, and continue drinking the water! Instead, you find a new well, or figure out how to un-poison the well (obviously, in the meantime you treat the people currently poisoned, but first and foremost you don't keep drinking poisoned water). Similarly here, the solution is not to keep going with our current broken society, but to fix the society so that people aren't being made mentally ill by it.

Wholly agree that mental illness should be taken seriously. Having been in personal valley an having sought help, I must say my encounter with the mental health world has been so staggeringly disappointing, with so little science on display. The experience has been like stepping into the church of some religion you haven't been indoctrinated into, instantly apparent how little connection to logic or reality the dogma possesses.

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