The True Nature of Mental Illness

Do I have OCD or am I just a conscientious person? Some people say that I’m angry, but I prefer to say, “I’m passionate!” Does my child have ADHD or can I keep considering them to be “very active”. With mental illness, there doesn’t seem to be a very handy litmus test that says whether one has an illness or not. The phlebotomist can’t just draw blood, and then send the sample to someone who can look under a microscope for evidence and then give a definitive diagnosis of a mental illness.

Diagnosis for mental illnesses is guided by a manual which gives common symptoms that can be compared to symptoms presenting. A best guess is then rendered through the lens of the lived experiences of a therapist, who may or may not feel that something rises to the level of giving a diagnosis. Sometimes mental health therapists use a tool that scores responses to questions, but even that can be skewed in various directions. Diagnosis is a moving target and cannot alone tell you much about a human being and the full spectrum of what is needed in order to help alleviate a person’s distress.

I have found that perhaps one of the best ways to help alleviate symptoms is take a diagnosis and find as many functional things as possible about it. For example, a person could be diagnosed with anxiety, may very well at their heart be a careful and conscientious person. Couldn’t the world use more people who are aware of others and careful about how they respond? And, if one could be diagnosed with depression, there are ways to look for all the good that the person experiences as well, and then help that person identify with more of the positive traits: deep thinker, introspective, willing to admit faults, etc.

This is not to diminish the real and painful struggles that many of us go through, but rather to take what is good, and highlight it. For most people, if they can accept the good about themselves and then work on diminishing the diagnostic symptoms, to at least be out of the “clinical range”, then they can embrace their whole selves, and the paradox of having flaws and still being an okay person. In fact, that really isn’t be a paradox at all. All are flawed and have environmental inadequacies. Perfectionism, then, is at the core of unhappiness. Michael S. Wilstead once compared perfectionism to gazing to closely at a rose. His position is that if you look through a microscope at even a rose, you’ll find that it too can seem ugly.

OCD can definitely be problematic. But once a person learns to manage the difficult symptoms, it can help a person who uses their problem as their talent, and then find ways to manage many details without the burden of obsessive thoughts and feelings. There is nothing inherently wrong with making sure doors are locked. We just don’t want to check them 5 times and then lay in bed all night wondering if we checked them 4 or 5 times.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has been feared by daycare staff, teachers, and parents, who know the demands that it can place on them as they try to clean up and prevent disasters from happening. But, if we focus too much on the negative, that is exactly what the child or adult with ADHD will focus on as well. When we meet them where they are, help them manage the tough symptoms, and join them in embracing their “unnoticed by society” talents, we can unlock the potential for adding an excitement and flavor for life that others wish they could discover in themselves.

Let’s turn the idea of diagnosis on its head. It is not about finding what is wrong and labeling another person, or ourselves, with identities that get stuck in only negativity. It is not about finding the exact cause of our struggles, a cause that needs to be eradicated. Diagnosis can be used as a way to inform treatment. Treatment should be about diminishing the struggles and increasing the positives. For by trying to get rid of something so embedded in personality, eradication of mental illness, as if it were the only characteristic of a diagnosis, is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We cannot and should not try to change who we are. Rather, we must focus on ourselves as a whole person, full of traits both positive and negative, full of hopes, dreams, and fears, and who at our core, are not much different from anyone else.