Mental Need, Mental Harm and - Mental Disability as a Main Disturbance in our Everyday Life, a Black Hole Disturbing the Arrival of Harmony and Equality Toward People
Results of Letting the Controversy of Mental Health Entering Into Everyday Life
I used to be asked several times whether I consider Mental Disability as a real, existing, provable phenomenon and whether I consider myself a mentally disabled person. I was honored to be approached with this question by well-known and appreciated mental health professionals.
Since there was not enough time neither the place was adequate for a detailed answer with proper argumentum I only said to both of the questions: NO.
It was a scissor-situation, because I did not want to harm the person I was sitting opposite of neither I wanted to have an exhausting and probably lifelong discussion through which the expertise of the person might become questioned, although the situation and the environment was very friendly.
The question was very similar to the time-bomb: on one side an expert was sitting, opposite a civilian and the question was covering the field of the expertise so the answers to this question from the person questioned and who might be considered mentally unhealthy does not have any significant addition to the questioned field: if a mental health expert is asking a question that is strongly related to his/her expertise and asks a presumably mentally disabled person if he/she feels/thinks she is mentally disabled, any of the possible answers does not give a true, satisfactory answer for both sides of the communication, it improves or cuts down either of them. Instead of having a friendly, informative, clear and open communication it results an uncertain, non-equal cooperation.
Let’s assume that my answer to the question whether I consider myself a mentally disabled person is: yes, I do – the mental health expert accepts the answer with a conclusion that I am aware of my sickness therefore I am cooperative, I can be cured. Under the mask of true, sincere cooperation we start talking about possible solutions for my cure, our cooperation is restricted to my mental health that is the very being of myself and might be easily mixed with my character. If I am vain (and I need somebody to threaten me as a mysterious creature), the cooperation might become endless and after some time I might really find myself mentally disabled, not because I am really disabled, but because of my vanity (to be a subject of somebody’s attention and good will) that is supported and improved by the idea of mental disability.
If I say: no, I am not – the mental health expert – using his/her previous experience with other civilians and being stuck in his point of view as an expertise stigmatizes me as non-cooperative, not aware of my sickness, therefore non-curable or – in worse case starts persuading me how wrong I am, how disabled I am.
Summa summarum: this kind of questions is offensive and senseless.
The only right question that an expertise is allowed to ask from civilian about theoretical questions, i.e. mental disability is: what is Mental Health (Mental Need, Mental Harm, Mental Disability) in your opinion?
My own psychiatrist said that the right answer in these situations is: I do not consider myself disabled, but somebody who needs to use his/her unaccustomed, non-specific abilities to find and awaken those which are presumably hidden. This answer showed me that either the question about Mental Health should be posed only by real expertise who does not want to make experiments in everyday life, but would like to obtain real answers.
I would like to thank this way my psychiatrist for his answer and almost a decade-longing patience with me.
Mental Health as a grey ground
The ground of Mental Health is agreeably formulated as “grey ground” where endless agreement, cooperation can be maintained but also can easily cause anarchy and a kind of hidden social system, because while its findings are based on the results which are gained with the instruments of improved sciences, it is a subject of abstract sciences.
Regardless of the enormous need for formulating it (in the aim to understand the Human being itself), time urges the need that the question of Mental Health has to be returned onto its place of theory. Thousands of researches have already been made; the concept of Mental Health became an everyday issue in the media. Although our Human nature is pushing us towards the unanswered questions through different sciences, religions and arts, there is also a need of assimilating the collected data and experiences and attempting to give a new assumption based on some conclusions we already have.
To be able to make new assumptions, the subject and concept of Mental Health needs to be put back to the abstract terms and theories, out of the close life and neighborhood and to look at all the results of findings and researches.
The difficulty with the new assumption of Mental Health is that it can not be logically reduced to a clear cause-effect theory neither it has been considered as a clarified abstract when it was formulated – it was a weakly-conceptional idea about possible answers about unknown, unexplorable phenomena of human understanding and feeling which had – without a doubt - positive intentions and visions about the humanity and therefore – just like other visions - was surrounded by mysticism. The idea of Mental Health was born before it was ready to be formulated and the Mental Health dilemma appeared earlier and more wide-spread than we were able to face with it and handle it. The name anticipated the matter of the object.
Furthermore, the developments and fields of theoretical, abstract sciences whose focus is humanity are usually overlaping each other and this fact on one hand justifies that the issues discussed within the science matters and relates to every individual in society, on other hand these sciences want the explanation of humanity to be their exclusive place of research and explanation, they show an incredibly marginal and exclusional position towards each other, although they serve humanity. For instance, psycho-social health is the field of most of theoretical sciences therefore it relates to many of them and involves almost every participant of the society as a sufferer or causer of psycho-social illness... This is the reason why the theoretical sciences have to stay in their place, their discussion should be quiet and the common agreement should arrive into the life of individuals. At this moment every individual is involved and an endless arguing is overwhelming them, giving an open door to senslessness.
In simple words: when speaking about Mental Health, mostly medical terms are mixed with general expressions and this is what causes barriers and confusions in communication and understanding. Why shall we use medical phrases and explanations for describing something that is human? Is the term Mental a medical expression? Is Health a medical expression?
I sometimes have faced with this painful confusion of medical-human approach towards each other in everyday life: when a presumably mentally healthy person makes a mistake, his/her mistake is considered as a human mistake and is followed by understanding, accepting the apology and leaving the individual to learn, but if a presumably non-healthy person makes the same mistake, the mistake derives from his/her mental sickness that follows no apology but rather pity and needs reparation in the person itself...
Mental Need as the basic subject of Mental Health
Although I do not agree with the term Mental Need and would suggest simply Human non-physical Need instead of it, the Mental Need is one of the widest and most difficult terms to formulate and from my point of view this is the real ground of cooperation and further discussions that results as less as possible harms to any parts of the communication and can contribute to the further development of the idea of Mental Health. By formulating Mental Need the Mental Health again might become a theoretical science.
The Non-formulation of Mental Harm is the Consequence of Avoidance of the Formulation of Mental Need
Without proper discussion about the Need there is no realistic neither acceptable discussion about the term of Mental Harm, furthermore there is no clear definition of Mental Disability.
Mental Disability Still an Abstract Problematic
With avoidance of Mental Need, Mental Harm the term of Mental Disability can not have meaning.
The only Mental Disability that I reckon at this moment is which derives from physical disability (born or achieved), which is backed up with proper, detailed examination and the connection of the disabilities are proven and they are treatable. Even in this case the starting point for curing is to treat the physical disability, the Mental Disability is just a side-effect. As a matter of fact, Mental Disability should be considered as a side-effect of any malfunction within a person, society or even of humanity.
Other “mental” disabilities i.e. psycho, social or psycho-social disabilities are not disabilities of one person him/herself but the interaction between his/her surrounding, (family, friends, neighborhood etc.) and more generally the disability of the whole society therefore should be the matter of each of us and not only experts.
And there is again a dilemma: what is really the responsibility of everybody and what only of expertise?
The answer is:
Abstracts to the Abstracts…
What I see at this moment in the field of Mental Health is a kind of opposition of experts and sciences - which consider the problematic of Mental Health their own exclusive field - towards each other, the aim is not clarification but arising additional problematic questions to strengthen the position, without an attempt to clarify what hasn’t been clarified yet. The only aim is positioning towards each other that results respect and leadership, life guidance, a desire that is deeply rooted in human nature.
The question of Mental Health needs urgent answers because of the following:
The World’s theoretical chaos or Mental Disability rooted sometime in the past, sprouted during the First and expanded to the highest possible level during the Second World War.
Its unexplainable, unacceptable, world-destructive results needed many explanations to make humanity stand up and go on living. Even today we suffer of its consequences, and we have chosen endless discussions and a kind of positive nihilism to survive and explain the madness happened. At the same time the discussions are keeping us busy from much more important issue, the most important one: peace and well-being.
The weak point of the positive nihilism is that it derives directly from the negative nihilism that rooted immediately before and during the Second World War and of which consequences we had been worn of by theorists many times.
Although this positive nihilism looked till nowadays as an only root for accepting all the destructions those were caused by the indicators of the War and later on, it is not the real answer, it is just an opposite approach whose result might be very similar to the results of its source and might have much deeper consequences than we ever dreamed of.
It can be clearly seen even by a non-theorist that the real opposite of negative nihilism is not the positive one, but the positivism that includes activeness, willingness…
The future of Mental Health depends on clarifications and real work on summarizing what already has been done and experienced, with avoiding any kind of arising sometimes meaningless ad hoc created problematics.
Deep in human nature there is a strong desire to understand and explain everything; the aim is the same as the aim of all sciences – to take over the leadership, regardless of whether it is a leadership towards humanity, society or leadership over nature. In this aim we use all the available equipments we have and think we are reaching the top of the knowledge. There are people with very good skills, some of them have very good perception, and some of them have a strong and concentrated understanding or basic knowledge… And each of them has a hole in his/her abilities.
At this moment we are trying to hide our weak points and strongly concentrate to exploit the best of us (positivism) or, at least we are forced to do it. If we can not understand or explain something, our concentration is easily moving onto a weaker point onto something or somebody who is much easier to be explained.
As an example I will use the question of art: the inexplicable and indescribable things are those which mostly make us nervous and at the same time very curious. One of the tools for getting closer to inexplicable and indescribable is art, whichever form it has. Mainly these works are describing our inner perception of the world or are visions but basically they are only experiments and the root of the world is formulated with the help of artists.
The problematic arises when a piece of art is indescribable and inexplicable. We again start being nervous and curious and are not focusing on the piece of art, but rather on the artist, his behavior, his tools, understanding, feeling. Here is the point when it can be easily considered that the artist him/herself was in such a state when he/she was not reasonable, needs explanation. Moreover, if the piece of art shows a vision about the world, our human nature does not let us to accept the vision in complete but is strongly opposing it.
If before the World Wars people had heard all those gentle, non-direct cautions of differently able people, artists, the average human being would have never fallen into the mistake of believing in explanations of one destructive mind. This destructive mind knew it and used this disability of humanity and used it against it, in better words used to force it to commit suicide.
Art pieces those are warning and have a clue are the real ones; they are giving us keys, solutions to all the difficulties we go through.
I presume that the question of Mental Health has failed because, like the question of art, is somehow connected with unsuccessful understanding and old-fashioned, logical, empirical scientific approach.
What gives hope is that art and all abstracts will be placed onto their well-deserved place of theories and abstracts, while the science will have to find new roads and approaches towards them.
This also relates to Mental Health as well: it is upon scientists to take back this toy and start seriously working on and with it: at this time its realistic basis and existence needs more prove. The toy was given, experiments started on streets: many people (self-named psychiatrists, therapeutics and psychologists whose vanity or material well-being is their main motivation) played and are still playing with it, but we, who are seriously taking each other’s needs and life in general, do not wish to be part of this game, want only to be human beings.
Although nowadays it seems a good business to deal with these issues, I encourage those people who are not willing to work quietly and hard, to leave the field of Mental Health, because the credibility of the scientists will then be much more transparent and their work (and not names) will be appreciated and very valuable for each of us. And the root of the Humanity might become clear, visible, as well as the road of the development and aim of it.
Results of Letting the Controversy of Mental Health Entering Into Everyday Life
I used to be asked several times whether I consider Mental Disability as a real, existing, provable phenomenon and whether I consider myself a mentally disabled person. I was honored to be approached with this question by well-known and appreciated mental health professionals.
Since there was not enough time neither the place was adequate for a detailed answer with proper argumentum I only said to both of the questions: NO.
It was a scissor-situation, because I did not want to harm the person I was sitting opposite of neither I wanted to have an exhausting and probably lifelong discussion through which the expertise of the person might become questioned, although the situation and the environment was very friendly.
The question was very similar to the time-bomb: on one side an expert was sitting, opposite a civilian and the question was covering the field of the expertise so the answers to this question from the person questioned and who might be considered mentally unhealthy does not have any significant addition to the questioned field: if a mental health expert is asking a question that is strongly related to his/her expertise and asks a presumably mentally disabled person if he/she feels/thinks she is mentally disabled, any of the possible answers does not give a true, satisfactory answer for both sides of the communication, it improves or cuts down either of them. Instead of having a friendly, informative, clear and open communication it results an uncertain, non-equal cooperation.
Let’s assume that my answer to the question whether I consider myself a mentally disabled person is: yes, I do – the mental health expert accepts the answer with a conclusion that I am aware of my sickness therefore I am cooperative, I can be cured. Under the mask of true, sincere cooperation we start talking about possible solutions for my cure, our cooperation is restricted to my mental health that is the very being of myself and might be easily mixed with my character. If I am vain (and I need somebody to threaten me as a mysterious creature), the cooperation might become endless and after some time I might really find myself mentally disabled, not because I am really disabled, but because of my vanity (to be a subject of somebody’s attention and good will) that is supported and improved by the idea of mental disability.
If I say: no, I am not – the mental health expert – using his/her previous experience with other civilians and being stuck in his point of view as an expertise stigmatizes me as non-cooperative, not aware of my sickness, therefore non-curable or – in worse case starts persuading me how wrong I am, how disabled I am.
Summa summarum: this kind of questions is offensive and senseless.
The only right question that an expertise is allowed to ask from civilian about theoretical questions, i.e. mental disability is: what is Mental Health (Mental Need, Mental Harm, Mental Disability) in your opinion?
My own psychiatrist said that the right answer in these situations is: I do not consider myself disabled, but somebody who needs to use his/her unaccustomed, non-specific abilities to find and awaken those which are presumably hidden. This answer showed me that either the question about Mental Health should be posed only by real expertise who does not want to make experiments in everyday life, but would like to obtain real answers.
I would like to thank this way my psychiatrist for his answer and almost a decade-longing patience with me.
Mental Health as a grey ground
The ground of Mental Health is agreeably formulated as “grey ground” where endless agreement, cooperation can be maintained but also can easily cause anarchy and a kind of hidden social system, because while its findings are based on the results which are gained with the instruments of improved sciences, it is a subject of abstract sciences.
Regardless of the enormous need for formulating it (in the aim to understand the Human being itself), time urges the need that the question of Mental Health has to be returned onto its place of theory. Thousands of researches have already been made; the concept of Mental Health became an everyday issue in the media. Although our Human nature is pushing us towards the unanswered questions through different sciences, religions and arts, there is also a need of assimilating the collected data and experiences and attempting to give a new assumption based on some conclusions we already have.
To be able to make new assumptions, the subject and concept of Mental Health needs to be put back to the abstract terms and theories, out of the close life and neighborhood and to look at all the results of findings and researches.
The difficulty with the new assumption of Mental Health is that it can not be logically reduced to a clear cause-effect theory neither it has been considered as a clarified abstract when it was formulated – it was a weakly-conceptional idea about possible answers about unknown, unexplorable phenomena of human understanding and feeling which had – without a doubt - positive intentions and visions about the humanity and therefore – just like other visions - was surrounded by mysticism. The idea of Mental Health was born before it was ready to be formulated and the Mental Health dilemma appeared earlier and more wide-spread than we were able to face with it and handle it. The name anticipated the matter of the object.
Furthermore, the developments and fields of theoretical, abstract sciences whose focus is humanity are usually overlaping each other and this fact on one hand justifies that the issues discussed within the science matters and relates to every individual in society, on other hand these sciences want the explanation of humanity to be their exclusive place of research and explanation, they show an incredibly marginal and exclusional position towards each other, although they serve humanity. For instance, psycho-social health is the field of most of theoretical sciences therefore it relates to many of them and involves almost every participant of the society as a sufferer or causer of psycho-social illness... This is the reason why the theoretical sciences have to stay in their place, their discussion should be quiet and the common agreement should arrive into the life of individuals. At this moment every individual is involved and an endless arguing is overwhelming them, giving an open door to senslessness.
In simple words: when speaking about Mental Health, mostly medical terms are mixed with general expressions and this is what causes barriers and confusions in communication and understanding. Why shall we use medical phrases and explanations for describing something that is human? Is the term Mental a medical expression? Is Health a medical expression?
I sometimes have faced with this painful confusion of medical-human approach towards each other in everyday life: when a presumably mentally healthy person makes a mistake, his/her mistake is considered as a human mistake and is followed by understanding, accepting the apology and leaving the individual to learn, but if a presumably non-healthy person makes the same mistake, the mistake derives from his/her mental sickness that follows no apology but rather pity and needs reparation in the person itself...
Mental Need as the basic subject of Mental Health
Although I do not agree with the term Mental Need and would suggest simply Human non-physical Need instead of it, the Mental Need is one of the widest and most difficult terms to formulate and from my point of view this is the real ground of cooperation and further discussions that results as less as possible harms to any parts of the communication and can contribute to the further development of the idea of Mental Health. By formulating Mental Need the Mental Health again might become a theoretical science.
The Non-formulation of Mental Harm is the Consequence of Avoidance of the Formulation of Mental Need
Without proper discussion about the Need there is no realistic neither acceptable discussion about the term of Mental Harm, furthermore there is no clear definition of Mental Disability.
Mental Disability Still an Abstract Problematic
With avoidance of Mental Need, Mental Harm the term of Mental Disability can not have meaning.
The only Mental Disability that I reckon at this moment is which derives from physical disability (born or achieved), which is backed up with proper, detailed examination and the connection of the disabilities are proven and they are treatable. Even in this case the starting point for curing is to treat the physical disability, the Mental Disability is just a side-effect. As a matter of fact, Mental Disability should be considered as a side-effect of any malfunction within a person, society or even of humanity.
Other “mental” disabilities i.e. psycho, social or psycho-social disabilities are not disabilities of one person him/herself but the interaction between his/her surrounding, (family, friends, neighborhood etc.) and more generally the disability of the whole society therefore should be the matter of each of us and not only experts.
And there is again a dilemma: what is really the responsibility of everybody and what only of expertise?
The answer is:
Abstracts to the Abstracts…
What I see at this moment in the field of Mental Health is a kind of opposition of experts and sciences - which consider the problematic of Mental Health their own exclusive field - towards each other, the aim is not clarification but arising additional problematic questions to strengthen the position, without an attempt to clarify what hasn’t been clarified yet. The only aim is positioning towards each other that results respect and leadership, life guidance, a desire that is deeply rooted in human nature.
The question of Mental Health needs urgent answers because of the following:
The World’s theoretical chaos or Mental Disability rooted sometime in the past, sprouted during the First and expanded to the highest possible level during the Second World War.
Its unexplainable, unacceptable, world-destructive results needed many explanations to make humanity stand up and go on living. Even today we suffer of its consequences, and we have chosen endless discussions and a kind of positive nihilism to survive and explain the madness happened. At the same time the discussions are keeping us busy from much more important issue, the most important one: peace and well-being.
The weak point of the positive nihilism is that it derives directly from the negative nihilism that rooted immediately before and during the Second World War and of which consequences we had been worn of by theorists many times.
Although this positive nihilism looked till nowadays as an only root for accepting all the destructions those were caused by the indicators of the War and later on, it is not the real answer, it is just an opposite approach whose result might be very similar to the results of its source and might have much deeper consequences than we ever dreamed of.
It can be clearly seen even by a non-theorist that the real opposite of negative nihilism is not the positive one, but the positivism that includes activeness, willingness…
The future of Mental Health depends on clarifications and real work on summarizing what already has been done and experienced, with avoiding any kind of arising sometimes meaningless ad hoc created problematics.
Deep in human nature there is a strong desire to understand and explain everything; the aim is the same as the aim of all sciences – to take over the leadership, regardless of whether it is a leadership towards humanity, society or leadership over nature. In this aim we use all the available equipments we have and think we are reaching the top of the knowledge. There are people with very good skills, some of them have very good perception, and some of them have a strong and concentrated understanding or basic knowledge… And each of them has a hole in his/her abilities.
At this moment we are trying to hide our weak points and strongly concentrate to exploit the best of us (positivism) or, at least we are forced to do it. If we can not understand or explain something, our concentration is easily moving onto a weaker point onto something or somebody who is much easier to be explained.
As an example I will use the question of art: the inexplicable and indescribable things are those which mostly make us nervous and at the same time very curious. One of the tools for getting closer to inexplicable and indescribable is art, whichever form it has. Mainly these works are describing our inner perception of the world or are visions but basically they are only experiments and the root of the world is formulated with the help of artists.
The problematic arises when a piece of art is indescribable and inexplicable. We again start being nervous and curious and are not focusing on the piece of art, but rather on the artist, his behavior, his tools, understanding, feeling. Here is the point when it can be easily considered that the artist him/herself was in such a state when he/she was not reasonable, needs explanation. Moreover, if the piece of art shows a vision about the world, our human nature does not let us to accept the vision in complete but is strongly opposing it.
If before the World Wars people had heard all those gentle, non-direct cautions of differently able people, artists, the average human being would have never fallen into the mistake of believing in explanations of one destructive mind. This destructive mind knew it and used this disability of humanity and used it against it, in better words used to force it to commit suicide.
Art pieces those are warning and have a clue are the real ones; they are giving us keys, solutions to all the difficulties we go through.
I presume that the question of Mental Health has failed because, like the question of art, is somehow connected with unsuccessful understanding and old-fashioned, logical, empirical scientific approach.
What gives hope is that art and all abstracts will be placed onto their well-deserved place of theories and abstracts, while the science will have to find new roads and approaches towards them.
This also relates to Mental Health as well: it is upon scientists to take back this toy and start seriously working on and with it: at this time its realistic basis and existence needs more prove. The toy was given, experiments started on streets: many people (self-named psychiatrists, therapeutics and psychologists whose vanity or material well-being is their main motivation) played and are still playing with it, but we, who are seriously taking each other’s needs and life in general, do not wish to be part of this game, want only to be human beings.
Although nowadays it seems a good business to deal with these issues, I encourage those people who are not willing to work quietly and hard, to leave the field of Mental Health, because the credibility of the scientists will then be much more transparent and their work (and not names) will be appreciated and very valuable for each of us. And the root of the Humanity might become clear, visible, as well as the road of the development and aim of it.
It's a good article, and a trust you're proud of it. Insofar as it matters (and I'm not sure it does), I largely agree with you. Certainly I think you're right that mental illness is an undefined category that doesn't in its current form make much sense, and somehow marginalises the real experience of the people who are perceived to be affected by it (whatever 'it' is). And I like the way you deal with the fact that there are real experiences there to be understood. It seems to me politically in the user movement, this might be important. We hear a good deal that the current professionals get it wrong (and I have no doubt that they do), but that message comes through as purely negative, implicitly followed by 'and we don't want anything to do with any of this'. We do not hear enough the more interesting challenge that there are experiences that need to be understood that are not being understood.
VálaszTörlésHow optimistic am I that this will happen? I'm afraid not as optimistic as you seem to be. You seem to acknowledge that some serious theoretical knowledge needs to be brought to the problem, and I think that must be right. The difficulty I think is that such knowledge comes with baggage. I have long believed that research tells us much more about the people doing the research than the subject of study (and if you think about it, psychiatry has for the last couple of hundred years been a *stellar* example of that!). Even with the good will of professionals, that is not going to go away. When I look at something, I look at it as a lawyer, with all those legal categories and legal attitudes that were drummed into me. Genetics seems to be the new hope of medicine; but I suspect that it will end up telling us a lot about geneticists and perhaps genetics, without necessarily telling us much about the problems that were being studied. That means, I fear, that the fresh approach that you want, while essential, is also going to be difficult to bring about, since whoever does it will, if they have the background to make a go of it, will already be tainted by that background.
Nonetheless, thank-you for the paper. I really did enjoy it.
Best wishes -
Peter Bartlett, Nottingham