Talk About It Hye Jee Kim

Hye Jee Kim

Mr. Logsdon

AP English Language and Composition

13 December 2015

Talk About It

I’m going to start off my speech by apologizing for my cough. I got sick after KYA. Although I never actually went to a doctor, my other symptoms suggest that I had a common cold, which is frequently caused by a class of viruses called rhinoviruses. You see, the rhinovirus that caused my cold latched itself inside of my nose, reproduced, and slowly trickled down to my lungs. My immune system, which at this point is panicked about this strange new resident in my body, fights it off by causing the inflammation of blood vessels and increasing mucus secretions (What Causes the Common Cold?). This isn’t too hard to accept, right? You don’t have any objections to my presentation of the physiological changes that have caused me to cough, right? Exactly. So, why is it that everyone accepts these causes for physical sickness, but many fail to do so with mental illnesses? How does this impact the social stigma surrounding mental disorders? And what can we do to help? These are the questions that I will endeavor to answer in less than eight minutes.

            “Psychiatric disorders are not medical diseases. There are no lab tests, brain scans, X-rays or chemical imbalance tests that can verify any mental disorder as a physical condition. Psychiatry has repackaged … emotions and behaviors as “disease” in order to sell drugs. This is a brilliant marketing campaign, but it is not science.” These are the words of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, established in 1969 by the very credible, completely unbiased, Church of Scientology. Unfortunately, this is a prevalent sentiment in today’s society, but it isn’t true. As noted in the book, What is Mental Illness, the causes of disorders such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or bipolar disorder, are nuanced (McNally 3). But nuanced doesn’t mean nonexistent. Look at depression, specifically. A review of studies conducted on depression concluded that “MDD (Major Depressive Disorder) can be spontaneous but often follows a traumatic emotional experience or can be a symptom of other diseases, most often neurological or endocrine… nearly 50% of the risk of depression is due to genetic factors.” (Villanueva 1). This shows that depression is not laziness or a case of pretty bad Monday Blues. It has real, biological causes (Sapolsky Depression). Let’s look at the causes of OCD. A comprehensive survey of studies shows that “OCD involves subtle structural and functional abnormalities of the orbito-frontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, the caudate nucleus, the amygdala nuclei, the accumben nucleus, the cortical thalamic nuclei, as well the white matter, the hippocampus, and other regions…. Additionally, the dysregulation of the posterior caudatus putmen and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the pallidus internus and the thalamus may account for the neurological symptoms such as tics.. and other OCD spectrum motor issues.” (Fornaro et al 1) For those of us who aren’t neuroscientists, which I’m guessing is all of us, that whole bit of scientific mumbo-jumbo is essentially saying that OCD can be traced back to imbalances in your brain. This plethora of information clearly shows that mental disorders are illnesses caused by a variety of factors.

So why is this difficult to some people (looking at you Tom Cruise) to accept? It’s because of the social stigma surrounding mental disorders. According to a study conducted by University of Chicago psychiatrists, many people believe that people with mental disorders are to be blamed for exhibiting symptoms, as they should be able to “control” their disorder (Corrigan et al 16). This is the attitude that leads people to believe that suffering from a disorder is synonymous to having behavioral problems. Max Silverman, whose brother suffered from bipolar disorder says “We don’t know how to talk about mental health yet… It took me years to realize that something like getting out of bed, which is a small hill for me, might be a huge hill for him. It took me years to get to a place where I could support my own brother without questioning his legitimacy.” He describes the fear, the discomfort that people felt when talking to his brother, as they interpreted his illness as “fundamental character flaws”. (Silverman, “Talking About Invisible Illness”). In order to combat this misunderstanding, we need to have open, honest conversation. But the stigma prevents this from happening. Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you’ve had a conversation about mental illnesses outside of psychology class? Have you ever? For the first 15 years of my life, I never did. In that way stigma is a vicious cycle. The more we don’t talk about mental disorders, the more the stigma grows, and the more we don’t talk. Because as a group we haven’t talked about mental illness or its causes, because as a group we continue to fear people who suffer from them because they’re “crazy” or “weird”, because as a group we continue to use the word retarded as an insult, we have created a culture that undermines the seriousness of mental illnesses. We’ve created a culture that led Max to doubt his own brother.

I’m going to tell you a story now. Once upon a time, in the wonderful, puberty-filled, terrible place that we call middle school, I had a friend. We were really close in the 6^th grade. We hung out at her house, went to Great Wolf Lodge, went camping, played on her trampoline, and did other middle-school things. In the 7^th grade, for reasons I won’t get into, we had a falling out. Shortly afterwards, I learned that she was suffering from depression. For some reason, that made me angry. I remember thinking to myself, why is she depressed? She doesn’t have a reason to be depressed. Hell, she went to a One Direction concert a month ago. Doesn’t she realize that so many people have it way worse than her? She should just snap out of it. That. That attitude right there is the reason that people don’t converse about mental illness. It’s what makes some people reluctant to admit that they’re suffering and ask for help. Comedian Wayne Brady, who suffers from depression, said, “I didn’t want to talk about it (my depression) earlier. I didn’t want to seem like a sad sack.” (Brady, “Why I Waited to Talk About My Depression”) We treat mental illnesses differently than other sicknesses. This is clear by the fact that the page where I found the Scientology quote was titled “Real Disease vs. Mental “Disorders”. Nobody suffering from leukemia or diabetes would be judged for admitting they’re suffering from a disease. They won’t be shamed for seeking help from a doctor, or told to just snap out of it.

To conclude, how can we end this stigma? We can talk. Talk about the causes, research the symptoms, learn as much as you can so that the next time you find yourself uncomfortable around someone who is suffering, you’ll realize there is no reason to be. Stop calling anybody who’s a neat-freak or organized “OCD”. Don’t claim that you have ADHD just because you got distracted in math class. Unless you’ve been diagnosed, don’t say that you’re bipolar because you were happy yesterday, but are sad today. Understand that these are medical conditions that are caused by real, legitimate factors, not adjectives to describe annoying character traits. And finally, understand that although mental disorders are serious, they by no means define an entire person.

  

Works Cited

Brady, Wayne. "Why I Waited to Talk About My Depression." Interview. Www.youtube.com. BringChange2Mind, 21 Jan. 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

CORRIGAN, PATRICK W, and AMY C WATSON. “Understanding the Impact of Stigma on People with Mental Illness.” World Psychiatry 1.1 (2002): 16–20. Print.

Depression in the US. Perf. Robert Sapolsky. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Dec. 2015.

Fornaro, Michele, Filippo Gabrielli, Claudio Albano, Stefania Fornaro, Salvatore Rizzato, Chiara Mattei, Paola Solano, Valentina Vinciguerra, and Panteleo Fornaro. "Obsessive-compulsive Disorder and Related Disorders: A Comprehensive Survey." Annals of General Psychiatry 8.13 (2009): 1-13. Print.

McNally, Richard J. What Is Mental Illness? Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 2011. Print.

"Real Disease vs. Mental Disorder." Real Disease vs. Mental Disorder. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Talking About Invisible Illness. Perf. Max Silverman. N.p., 02 Dec. 2014. Web. 3 Dec. 2015.

Weir, Kirsten. "The Roots of Mental Illness." Monitor on Psychology 43.6 (2012): 30. Print.

"What Causes the Common Cold?" HowStuffWorks. N.p., 17 Mar. 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.

Villanueva, Rosa. "Neurobiology of Major Depressive Disorder." Neurobiology of Major Depressive Disorder. Ed. Michel Baudry. N.p., 11 Sept. 2013. Web. 3 Dec. 2015.