Untreated Mental Illness

Posted on October 4, 2002 in IRC/Chat

Witnessed yet another conversation involving snaily^ and some others against homophobes. snaily^ pointed out that that psychiatrists stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental illness forty years ago. One of her antagonists said “So what? In about ten years they’ll put it back on.”

Then a curious thought struck me. Paranoia is a mental illness. I open the news web sites and there it is, resident in the White House and spreading down to the population. I open up site to check on definitions and what I see in the press and the nation’s capital are spelled out. Most of America is sick with it these days. If you’re not paranoid about Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden, you’re paranoid about George Bush and John Ashcroft. (And I recall, in reference to the second case, that even a paranoid may be legitimately fearful!)

Diagnostic criteria for the disorder require the presence of four or more symptoms. I see these:

1. Americans have bought into the story that Saddam Hussein is behind the WTC attacks and is a danger to the United States despite the lack of credible evidence.
   
2. We are encouraged to worry whether our neighbors are terrorists or terrorist lovers.
   
3. Many of us don’t talk about our feelings or speak only in forums where our identities are hidden. Consider “the conservative” who anonymously suggested that I should be taken off to Iraq and bombed. Why the anonymity? Like what am I going to do to him?
   
4. Suggest diplomatic solutions or that this whole affair is a collossal waste of time, manpower, and money and you are called a “terrorist lover”.
   
5. The Gulf War has been over since 1992. Saddam Hussein is effectively quarantined in his country. And yet they can’t get over the fact that the UN did not let the US finish him off.
   
6. Anyone who criticizes American foreign policy is accused of hating America. Our allies are seen as disloyal for not joining us in the Iraqi Adventure.

Compare this to diagnostic criteria for the personality disorder I have posted as an appendix to this post. These are all on there in some form.

The dilemna: the disorder has reached a point where the sufferers plan to act on their fears violently. But you can’t get a real cure unless the patients see it as a problem and want treatment. We can’t force the whole United States of America into a nut house. So what do we do?

Let us hope and pray that the rest of the world finds a solution that doesn’t involve putting us into the kind of strait jacket that we’ve kept Iraq in for the last twelve years.

From Phillip Long’s Internet Mental Health:

1. suspects, without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him or her
   
2. is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trustworthiness of friends or associates
   
3. is reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against him or her
   
4. reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events
   
5. persistently bears grudges, i.e., is unforgiving of insults, injuries, or slights
   
6. perceives attacks on his or her character or reputation that are not apparent to others and is quick to react angrily or to counterattack

7. has recurrent suspicions, without justification, regarding fidelity of spouse or sexual partner