In the last two hundred years there has been a shift from having three generations in a household to having two. This really happened most in the 20th century hence the term nuclear family.
Doctors, obviously, were brought up in and propagate the nuclear family. The wisdom of the oldest generation has been lost.
This generation might tell them that misery is a part of life and they're handing out drugs little different from illegal narcotics. They might have been there in a doctor's childhood to teach them that pain is part of life and have the time to spend with them that their parents who work a 9-5 week can't offer them.
The three generation household's disintegration may be one of the factors of why people do better in developing world nations as well as, of course, the communities which are more accepting of different human emotions and states which include those which in the West mean incarceration in a psychiatric ward. Psychiatric crisis still happens in the developing world but is accepted by the community.
These cultures have ways to deal with unhappiness. They don't call it an illness. I'm not sure my grandparents would call it an illness either. They'd seen the breadth of the human condition in their long lives living in a third world country. Then they moved to the UK to recomplete the family unit.
I had the privilege of being brought up in a 3 generation household. Living with grandparents was not a good experience for my parents. It was the cultural norm for them though and had benefits. In a way it wasn't great for me either but there were many positives.
No comments:
Post a Comment