Sunday, 5 February 2012

A label-less system of mental health

Is this possible?

Yes and no. Yes in terms of destroying psychopathology but starting anew. Distress or misery is the label.

The problem is label assigns the right treatment first time or should do. A label less system doesn't allow for this. Science demands labels to do experiments and work out what works for different disabilities or forms of distress.

Then again, there is the future of the majority of mental health in my opinion: an individual. Everyone develops their own system to recognise their own problems and how they can be solved. It requires everyone to become as knowledgeable as a psychologist, psychiatrist, priest and sociologist and then some before they earn their 'license' to have their own system.

This possibility allows for a label less system.

Alternative a complaints based system, e.g. I feel shit because I miss the supportive and chaotic work environment of a certain workplace or I miss spending time with a certain lady friend, is one which simplifies things to temporary suffering and the solutions. People still retain their humanity and individuality. The problem, of course, is disability but if this could be changed without or with minimal suppression of the indvidual then this would be great and reduce the requirement for a label.

The old research from the psychiatric system could still be applied because the single factors could be used on their own rather than being averaged with others to form scores on scales like PANSS or GAD measures. E.g. if a person likes their delusions but doesn't want the hallucinations then the single measure of hallucinations could be looked at in terms of what works to suppress these or help a person cope or be resilient to them or whatever.

This is an all person mental health system which doesn't label people as medically ill and respects their individuality too. These two ideas are about empowering individuals rather than experts or other powerholders which has historically been a problem in mental healthcare - especially with psychiatry.

This is also about bringing science to a wider problem. Call it well being or distress or what makes it a shit of a life for too many people. It is about moving away from the cluster approach and fearing offering the priviledge of the invalid to those who aren't.

The key problems I'm stuck with are disability and insight. The latter is part of the power of psychiatry and I have no solution - I know I've been crazy at times and not realised how detrimental and risky it can be to my life. The former, the disability, is also important as a problem. I don't want anyone to be disabled because to me it means they will have a shit life when it shouldn't be that way. Disadvantages exist but disability needn't, not in developed societies.

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We It comes in part from an appreciation that no one can truly sign their own work. Everything is many influences coming together to the one moment where a work exists. The other is a begrudging acceptance that my work was never my own. There is another consciousness or non-corporeal entity that helps and harms me in everything I do. I am not I because of this force or entity. I am "we"