Public Comment

Most mental illnesses are believed to be rooted in how the brain works or doesn't work. For this reason, mental illness could correctly be classified as a medical problem, because the human brain is a bodily organ. Yet, because of our usage of English in the U.S., when most people communicate, mental illness is referred to as a mental problem and not a medical or physical one. It is imprecise but that's how people communicate. And in the future, that may change. 

It seems harder for some people with mind and life changing psychiatric conditions to deal with "medical" problems, in comparison to non-afflicted mainstream people. Many people with mental illness who are faced with serious medical conditions don’t deal with them and just die, and often at far too young an age. This may be related to lack of addressing health concerns, and/or it may be related to the medications we have to take as well as the deprived and unhealthy lifestyle of many mentally ill people. For example, I've never met a mental health consumer who has gone in for coronary bypass. I've met family members who have. One of them was my father and the other was my uncle. Neither were mentally ill. Yet, I've met mentally ill people who did not take good care of themselves, and they died, sometimes without forewarning. 

Dealing with medical issues is a lot of work. You can't let denial interfere with it, and you have to make an effort. Some of it can be scary. I, personally, have let medical issues go unaddressed for a long time. Meanwhile, more and more of them have come about, until now I'm facing maybe five medical issues that I haven't addressed. I'm starting to take necessary actions about it, and I'm prioritizing the ones that are the most urgent. And I'm way behind on it. But if I want to live, that's what I must do. 

There is never a convenient time to get surgery or to do other uncomfortable or difficult things that you have to do if you want to live. 

People who have a substantial psychiatric condition may have difficulties dealing with numerous areas of life. Socially, we may lack the proper guide as to how to interact. Many of us do not have lifelong friends. Many of us got sick with mental illness before we could have attended college. This, by itself, creates problems, because lack of college relegates a person to living in many respects at a lower level. 

But dealing with medical issues requires a lot of power. If you're facing a necessary surgery, you have to do the things to prepare for it; you have to show up for it, and usually you have to be put to sleep under anesthesia. I had oral surgery at age 30 to remove all four wisdom teeth. I asked to be under strictly local anesthesia. The oral surgeons obliged me with this. They worked fast, maybe because they wanted to be headed home by five. I was given a break and was told in definite terms not so smoke. I went and smoked, and it caused the biggest nosebleed I've ever had. 

Medical problems don't go away by wishing them away, and don't go away by practicing mindfulness. There are specific things you have to do. Some of them can entail a lot of work and a lot of effort. And many of them are time consuming. If your living situation is restricted, you may not have sufficient liberty to properly address a medical concern. You must be able to get to and from appointments. You must be able to sometimes schedule a weekend appointment and go to it. You may need to have money in your pocket to pay related expenses. You can't simply live in a supervised setting--in which you can't do what you need to do. 

Denial doesn't make a medical problem disappear. Going unacknowledged by those in charge of how you live, (if you aren't fully independent) does not eliminate medical necessity. And dealing with a physical health issue requires full competence. 

Dealing with physical health issues (and again, mental illness is actually a physical/medical health problem) is often a part of aging. Modern medicine has devised a vast number of ways that people can survive problems that in the past just killed people. 

Those who disbelieve in science don't seem to realize that there need not be a conflict between religion and science. Science describes how the physical universe works, but it doesn't explain how we got here or how the physical universe came about. Science cannot explain consciousness. A psychiatrist, who I came to believe was a fool with an M.D., said "Consciousness could be an illusion." This is as bogus as it gets. This takes atheism to a whole new level, where it becomes as bad as some cultlike churches. 

On the other hand, if your religion tells you to disregard science, you are depriving yourself of knowledge that people developed very methodically for thousands of years. Agnosticism, to me, is closer to the truth. This is because we don't know what we don't know. 

But we do know that we should get out of the way of a ten-thousand-pound speeding truck. And we do know that diseases, physical or psychiatric can kill, maim, or ruin. And this is to be avoided.