Stronger Than We Seem
© John McManamy
The following is based on two articles that first appeared in my depression and bipolar weekly:
The US Surgeon General, in his Report on Mental Health released late last year, did a great service in sounding the alarm over a major health concern, second only to heart disease. But by loudly proclaiming that as many as one in five Americans a year suffer from mental illness, he may have seriously overstated his case, lending the erroneous impression that we are a nation of victims, perpetually pinned to the mat by that unstoppable and inseparable tag team of genes and environment.
In fact, the opposite is true, that all but the most seriously afflicted among us possess an enormous capacity to fight back, and that in the act of taking both nature and nurture's best shots we tend to emerge far stronger and more complete.
Last year, a past president of the American Psychological Association and Stanford University professor, Dr Albert Bandura, attacked his own peers: "The field of psychology is plagued by a chronic condition of negativity regarding human development and functioning," he said in a speech to the APA.
"People have the power to influence what they do and to make things happen," he went on to say. That he felt compelled to state the obvious speaks volumes for the misperceptions that pass for wisdom in the mental health profession.
Marsha Langer Ellison PhD and Zlatka Russinova PhD of the Research Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University had this to say about their professional brethren:
"Professionals in the mental health system, employers, and the general public often cast a dispirited and pessimistic eye to those who have a severe mental illness and yet aspire to careers as professionals or managers. People with psychiatric conditions often talk about how they have heard that they will 'never work again,' or that they must resign themselves to the simplest, least rewarding, and lowest paying work."
Even those who occupy the rehabilitative end of the field, the authors note, peg their clients into low wage and menial work, the three f's: "food, filth, and filing."
It's as if the professions are more depressed than their own patients. That need not be the case. In an article commenting on Jay Neugeboren's "Imagining Robert," this writer observed:
"Eventually, over the long term, most of us do improve. Our brains are not simply genetically hardwired to keep us in one state of mind
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