Mental Illness Is There Such A Thing?

Are you serious? Of course there's such a thing as mental illness, and the majority of mentally ill people are not violent.

My father believed that when I was going through 10 years of depression: he thought fruit and vegetables have magical healing powers. I was dumb enough to believe him. Anyway by the time I was 21 I had enough. So I did a *beep* ton of psychedelics and developed a mental illness. I did not know I was mentally ill for 2 years. I was hearing decrepit, evil, homicidal, sexual predatory voices. I also had visual and auditory hallucinations. I believed people could unconsciously hear my thoughts. And all my thoughts were like a horror movie and worse. I couldn't even talk about the *beep* because the voices were telling me to rape and kill the person I'm talking to. Anyway, I eventually couldn't sleep in the same house as other people cause the rapist voices would keep me awake. I slept in empty parking lots for months. It got so bad I couldn't stay in the house during the day. I lived in my car for 3 weeks. Couldn't sleep at truck stops had to sleep at empty areas. So I went to my moms house and the voices are telling me to negotiate sex with her and I was like *beep* this. Started heading for the gun store and my mom took me to the mental hospital. And it took 3 years of meds and I still ain't right but it's 100x better. Meds and time. Meds and time.

Perhaps my question was a little dumb and your case certainly sounds like it, but sometimes I wonder if some psychologists will diagnose any bad behavior as that?

At least some of it is, I can speak from personal experience. I developed PTSD-like symptoms, but I didn't think it might be anything related to PTSD for 4 years and I was skeptical until recently when I found out about C-PTSD. I had to self-harm all the time to sensory stresses, I was drenched in my own blood. For years, I was truly baffled what was happening to me. I did not have a conventional label for it. I felt like stressors were making me vanish inside. What they tend to do is create a frenzied blur of incomplete thoughts. You start a thought, and then a second later, you are back looping over that thought and trying to squeeze more out until it just becomes a blur. I felt like I was vanishing, losing my internal thought processes, and self-harm kept me connected, and I would do it for as long as needed because the alternate terrified me.

On the 6th year I needed to self-harm every millisecond, and I survived for 30 minutes, before it finally happened. I was put into a full on hypnotic trance. I was thinking just prior, do I do 'this' (self-harm, no matter how insanely intense), or do I do that. 'That' is complicated and personal, but it involves confronting a person I couldn't bear to see or hear, it blinded me inside and also resulted in some intense self-harm to get my mind to unfreeze and move again, and I hadn't intentionally seen or spoken to them in 6 years. I would never have done 'that' voluntarily. But I couldn't keep up with the self-harm, and that minority possibility became a 'plan' that became programed into me. I last remembered sitting upright in my bed, totally calm. I don't remember getting up and leaving. I then remember attacking him with my hands. I remembered I couldn't control my eyelids, my eyes were wild. I was very, very slow to move, impossibly slow to not be able to defend against. I responded to being hit back, but I didn't feel the pain. The whole time I felt robotic, and I was the observer of this out of control person who was acting out a plan.

The moment they agreed to stop the sensory stressors, I fell to the ground and cowered in my arms. I then have difficulty remembering getting back. It felt disconnected. I was once again in the very same spot on my bed, in the same position (sitting up right). I thought it was a really weird dream experience of some kind, but I touched my lip and it was bleeding and at that point I knew it happened.

I didn't know what that was for many years after, until I learned about dissociation. Dissociation comprises everything from daydreaming and mild amnesia (such as things you do on autopilot; I personally think many OCD's are dissociative amnesia, for instance forgetting whether or not you turned off the iron) right up to multiple personalities (dissociative identity disorder) and trance/hypnotic states. I know from first hand experience what these sensory triggers cause if I don't self-harm. I have also heard about self-harming being common among those who're going through (phasing into) dissociation.

__________________Rota - Viola Sonata #1 http://youtu.be/kVcXpXJpveE

I think it does exist to a certain degree. But there are some things I don't think should be considered mental illnesses. I also think it has a much higher rate of misdiagnosis than physical conditions and a lot of people are locked up just because they have issues with their family, or have just had strange things happen to them. This day and age hypochondria can be a real issue, but at the same time someone can have a legitimate problem but doctors can't seem to figure it out so they can be labeled a hypochondriac. Or they could have multiple issues and when one thing is never diagnosed it can seem like they are crying wolf.

OCD exists to some form. When I was younger I had issues with it. I'm not sure what brought it on but I overcame it. It was mostly the ritual type of things for me, making sure the doors are locked multiple times even though I knew they were, and stuff like that.


But one thing I don't like is when someone who considers/tries to commit suicide, they are automatically labeled mentally ill. I don't think extreme sadness/depressions is a mental illness. It is a result of the things you have experienced in life. I'm not saying it's something that's okay to do, but just because someone got a bad hand in life and wants that to end, I don't think that makes them crazy. I think they need help and put somewhere temporarily to make sure they don't do it but I don't consider it a mental illness. There are real reasons to feel depression. To me it would only be a mental illness if they felt sad for no reason or for something minor. But something can just stick with someone their whole life, doesn't mean they have an imbalance. Sadness/depression is an emotion. You wouldn't say someone is crazy for laughing a lot *unless doing it maniacally or for inappropriate reasons* and you wouldn't say someones crazy for getting angry if it's a legitimate reason. But for someone who feels depressed for any reason they can be labeled mentally ill.