It's like I've been saying all along: stop portraying mental illness as 'hip' and 'cool', and less people will have it. From the shiftless and lazy who want an excuse, to the perennially insecure who want to find vindication through any means, we're a society that wants to shift blame to the uncontrollable. If you have a mental illness, well then, whatever's wrong with you isn't your fault. And if it's not your fault, why, you shouldn't be obligated to DO anything about it or take responsibility, let chemicals do it! And let everyone else pay for it!
Having worked around insurance fraud investigators for most of my youth, I can attest to the statistics which show that as much as 30% of all worker's compensation insurance claims are fraudulent. How much more the claims of manic depression? OCD? The mythical 'split personality'? It's the brass ring of sympathy, because you can claim to have some horrible disorder that's not your fault, and you get off scot-free doing whatever you want to do.
This isn't to say that there aren't legitimately crazy people out there. And that's how we need to look at them. Crazy. Sick. Broken. In need of help and pity. See mental illness, the REAL stuff, for the horrible tragedy it is. We need to, as a society, work to halt the romanticizing and trivializing of the disease, and work on a cure, not just a band-aid for the symptoms.
"Suck it up" is often a more apt panacea than Ritalin or Prozac, and should be used far more often, in my opinion.
no subject
Having worked around insurance fraud investigators for most of my youth, I can attest to the statistics which show that as much as 30% of all worker's compensation insurance claims are fraudulent. How much more the claims of manic depression? OCD? The mythical 'split personality'? It's the brass ring of sympathy, because you can claim to have some horrible disorder that's not your fault, and you get off scot-free doing whatever you want to do.
This isn't to say that there aren't legitimately crazy people out there. And that's how we need to look at them. Crazy. Sick. Broken. In need of help and pity. See mental illness, the REAL stuff, for the horrible tragedy it is. We need to, as a society, work to halt the romanticizing and trivializing of the disease, and work on a cure, not just a band-aid for the symptoms.
"Suck it up" is often a more apt panacea than Ritalin or Prozac, and should be used far more often, in my opinion.
~M.