In the mental health industry, one talks of “anxiety disorder” and “attention deficit disorder” and “mood disorder.”
The underlying implication? These diseases or disorders are the problem. Get rid of the problem, and you’ll be fine.
Cure the disease; and there will be no more symptoms.
But what if the things we call the disease are actually … just the symptoms?
Nobody ever seems to ask: Aren’t these disorders consequences of underlying problems? Are what we call mental disorders or diseases the RESULT of something that’s causing them?
Maybe what we call mental disorders are the result of mistaken thinking or self-defeating behaviors, accumulated over time. When you do the same wrong thing over and over again, and then get a poor result — lots of anxiety, or a downcast mood — maybe the problem is in your actions, choices or thinking. The mood or anxiety problem? That’s just the result.
For example, when you love someone who doesn’t love you back, or when you love someone who defines love as power and control (which aren’t love), then you eventually end up either extremely frightened or extremely sad. A psychiatrist will say, “You’ve got mental illness. You have a disease called depression.” Or anxiety disorder.
But doesn’t this mistake the symptom for the cause? Doesn’t labeling and conceptualizing things this way distract a person from the fact that he or she has more control over his or her resulting emotional state than the psychiatric industry assumes?
I know these are complex matters. But what troubles me most is that nobody even explores these questions.
I know the status quo represents an excellent deal for the mental health industry and anyone else invested (financially or ideologically or psychologically) in the status quo of looking at everything as a disease or disorder rather than error.
But I don’t know how good a deal this is for the person in pain or confusion.