A Glimpse of Mental Illness in a Time of Crisis

The idea of mental disorders may be born of Western science but people have always tried to define why some people behave in accordance with or against traditional norms. While mental disorders may have both physiological and environmental causes the terminology is only applied to the group of people who appear to experience maladaptive behavior. Most often maladaptive behavior and disability in the West is defined as the ability to be “productive” or make money.
When discussing mental disorder I’m reminded that everything we believe as maladaptive is not viewed the same way over the entire world. Over the past year in India children with severe birth defects are considered to be deities reincarnated from their ancient past. In the West they are considered severely disabled and doctors try and fix them, sometimes to the dismay of their parents who feel like they have been sent to bring blessings on the village. We think that is somehow backwards thinking. Other countries have people who claim to frequently speak with spirits or the spirit world. Those people are considered mentally unstable if those conversations make others feel uncomfortable and they can’t make a living. Often what is normative is defined by dollars and that doesn’t quite make sense for all cultures.
The disturbing thing about mental disorders is that the person experiencing the problem is often considered the disordered one. If a woman is harassed sexually at work then she can’t take a joke and receives a label based on that for example. Or if someone of color feels oppressed when the odds are constantly stacked against them then they are considered paranoid or have some other personality defect or disorder. These ideas sometimes remind me of Dr. Richard Cartwright who felt like African slaves suffered from drapetomania which was a disorder that caused Africans to “run away” from their tortured living conditions. Some of our proclamations of disorder are misplaced whether it is physical, mental or natural disaster. In essence we blame the victim similarly to Pat Robertson’s indictment of Haiti as deserving of catastrophe because of an historical pact with evil. It is interesting that despite the majority of the world coalescing around people in need the few people who make similar statements will never be diagnosed with a mental disorder. They won’t go undiagnosed because they are mentally stable but, because their maladaptive behavior is not preventing them from making money.