pezus said:
pokoko said:
We're talking about real disorders, but they are only part of the problem.
My sister was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, and yeah, she's the real thing. Paranoia, unpredictable mood swings, long periods where she won't get out of bed or wash her dishes. I let her move in temporarily for what was supposed to be a few weeks when she got evicted but that turned into a few years, most of which was spent on the couch. Believe me, I know. However, she's also obsessed with mental disorders. She's something of a hypochondriac, as before she professed to having everything under the sun, but then I made the mistake of letting her borrow my Abnormal Psychology textbook. Now she analyzes EVERYONE, and everyone is supposedly mentally unstable.
The big problem, though, the real problem, is that her mental illness has become her shield and her crutch. She hides behind it to escape any and all blame or responsibility. She is constantly angry with everyone, especially her family, for not "understanding" her--never mind that she makes no effort to understand anyone else. We're all supposed to bend over backwards because she is mentally ill. She once wrote a letter threatening to keep her daughter away from my mother and everyone else because we are all a "sick and unhealthy family". The irony is sad beyond words.
Mental problems, for some, has become the new entitlement of choice. It lets those who want to take advantage milk it for all it's worth, to escape any repercussions for anything they've said or done. In their eyes, it lets them demand everything from other people, to demand sympathy and special treatment.
That's the part that annoys me, along with health professionals assigning blame to everyone else around the patient. I mean no offense to those who do not behave this way. It's those who see having a mental disorder as their own personal "get out of jail free" card that need to wake up. |
Isn't this "get out of jail free" card just a part of the disorder sometimes?
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I suppose that's possible, but it seems to me like it's a new state of mind. Watch the news and we're told that a person isn't responsible for a crime if they have mental problems. I think it's a message that's starting to sink in with some people. I have two family members like that, who believe that being diagnosed with a mental problem mean everyone else is to blame and everyone else owes them. My mother is paying for my niece's car, she's paying for her car insurance, she pays for her drugs, she just paid for her college class, but now my niece is mad that my mom won't buy her a new dryer and has stopped speaking to her. She thinks having mental problems means she is owed something by her family and by society. There is no graditude.
