@Aonaran, I love your depth of thinking and use of metaphor to descibe your lived experience and thinking through and explaining. This bit...
"Anyway, my point is: obviously I'm not pretending to be any Peter Duesberg, but I can't help feeling there's more to any mental illness I've personally experienced than the "experts" talk about. It's a response to life, an attempt to right the balance of a tilted ship, and the focus on what's broken often masks what's keeping it afloat. Maybe our own personal variant of the HIV spectre isn't where the real problem lies, and this drive to pathologize may make things seem manageable to the "experts" but I do wonder what it actually contributes to the people for whom this is their life."
I was diagnosed with a particular diagnoses last year with several 'co-morbidities'. As a medical 'label' they are useful in so much as the (available) treatment and potential for understanding the physical attributes of the particular diagnoses. Although truth be told they have no clue as to what 'causes' it. I am not wed to that diagnoses in as much as use it to describe (but it only really touches just a part of what I experience) the lived experience. If I had presented on a different day (say a week after my back surgey and the terrible impact the aenesthetic and pain releif had on my mental health) i am sure I would have received a different diagnoses.
The system we live with has to have the pathologized descriptors so that those in the system, Doctors, Psychiatrists, Psychologists and MI health care workers feel that they are all on the right track. As people living with the condition/s it is evident (to me anyway) most of them haven't got a clue. This system fails at the first hurdle because every one of us, every one - has a unique mix of factors, experience, life, physiology, genetics etc. I see you will be quite clear if someone here responds but has not fully understood your point/s - I would like to ask - what difference does it make if we are 'pathologized' or not if the only systems in place to deal with our 'conditions' is structured in this way? To use your HIV/AIDS metaphor - if the treatments work to prolong life, educe symptoms and provide a quality of life, even if the boffins got it wrong at the 'cause' if the treatment works, it works... There may be better tratments or even a cure for the underlying causal agent if the cause is found to be something else (than HIV) but someone else needs to find that and prove it.
I have had the benefit of psychological counselling that definately does focus on "what keeps life afloat" and find this way more helpful, affirming and applicable than any psychoanalyses. I reckon the structures we have for damn near everything in this world are messed up badly, based on false premises, economic rationalisam, war & peace, armaments manufacture, dare I say patriarchy etc - we are all living in a dream/nightmare state where the people with power feed us lies and would keep us blind, and I am not a consipracy theorist, just a realist. The depressive side of this illness I live with always bottoms out in the depths when I try to unpack where it has all gone wrong and what I as an individual can do about it to change the world's story into one of hope, equality and peace. I see depression and despair as a fair response to the ills of the world, AND I know that I am a much less effective human being when I dwell there so do my very best to change my viewpoint and grasp onto hope as soon as I catch that I have fallen into a melancholic state which can be dyas, weeks or months later. I do try to do a re-set in my thinking once I catch myself squirrelling arounbd inn my own not-helpful thinking, not in a pollyannaish false positivity but by coming into the present and dwelling there, no pressure for as long as I can (a kind of nuetral thinking space just for a little while) until I take a bit of gladness in something - " ah! great! I heard that bird song and liked it. " must be on the up.
I heard during Mental Health Week on the radio that far more young people are living with anxiety and depression than ever before (taking into consideration the 'reporting' might be diffiernet than 30 years ago). That is not suprising, the world is a mess and the one's in charge seem blythe about their part in it. Having a depth of thought and consideration about our own lives, the state of the world, and these 'conditions' whatever thay are means we may be much more likely to also have a greater grasp and empathy for others. The great thing about these forums is he immense sense of good will have toward one another and their attempts to encourage each other, I love that, we get such little encouragement in our daily lives from others (or ourselves). So, even when someone doesn't quite 'get' me or seems to identify with something they themselves think rather than what I have said, i say 'thank you!" because they reached back and said 'me too' that is giving back expanding the "I" to We. Sometimes we will get that empathy wrong, but are not wrong in trying to shape it into something where we might acknowledge similarities and embrace shared experience, even if it means and it can only mean because we are inside sacks of skin that make us individuals, that it is not quite resonating right.
It is a pleasure to read your posts and depth of thought. I am glad you are here, Aonaran.
