Breaking the chains of the branding irons

Perhaps the biggest hurdle yet to be overcome in mental health is the one over the labels of diagnosis itself. For the doctors to understand how a person is faulty or ill labels were designed. Historically they were never meant to be shared with those not trained which included patients and concerned family members. However, this led to misdiagnosis as no one much bothered with what a person’s upbringing was, nor the impact of a traumatic effect even from barbaric treatments. Yes, there were some rather foolish people who got the wrong end of the stick and the usual quota of corrupt people who set about just being cruel to the most vulnerable. 

What a difference for there to be more and more discussion over diagnosis from the patients themselves and with medical teams in order to get ever closer to getting things right with pinpoint accuracy! In order to do so medical teams have had to translate their grand labels into terminology that people can understand; to not do so was rather like both parties trying to negotiable with a brick wall in a bomb blast.

Perhaps the labels should now be more in the form of an assessment of things that need to be addressed under these five key headings:

• Financial abuse
• Intellectual abuse
• Emotional abuse
• Physical abuse
• Natural disasters

If any and all are assessed in this way what could happen is that the symptoms (and therefore old labels) become less important as the cures become ever more obvious. It is irrelevant in our opinion as to how a person is distressed, what matters is the WHY are they?

There are two major snags with this approach, the first is obvious, it feeds into a class structure which itself can lead to prejudice. The second is less obvious but is also based in the same prejudice, namely that no one wants to be seen as equal to everyone else. The fact that we are not and never will be we are adept at forgetting until we feel hard done by in any way. The question is do we really want to be equal to everyone else, and the resounding answer is no. We merely want an equal chance which is entirely different. We desire the opportunity to be whatever we wish to be without obstacles in our way, but the obstacles are bit by bit being kicked away by people like you. With such determination to beat what should never have been the cause of illness in our world today and with evermore people signing up to help win that battle, we can only ever succeed. 

Ten final healing things to learn

The cures are within ourselves. With the aid of medical teams we can ask the right questions, get clarification on how they are interpreting our behaviours, thoughts and feelings and ask for them to look at things on the basis of what we know has deeply hurt us. We can ask them to help us move on from ask them to help us to:-

1. Learn how to walk away and ignore all that is bad for us
2. Learn how to fill our lives with all things creative, constructive, positive
3. Learn how to dare to share and with who, when, and why to trust others, what for and how
4. Learn how to form happy, rewarding symbiotic relationships
5. Learn how to find joy and interesting hobbies and work to do
6. Learn how to prevent ourselves and our loved ones from becoming ill
7. Learn how to cope with new troubles, hurts and losses as well as new successes and nice surprises
8. Learn how to cope with old memories being raked up
9. Learn how to adapt, evolve to find ever more peace within ourselves and all that we engage with.
10. Learn how to find laughter and to celebrate safely without harm to ourselves or others
    
    

It comes down to a joint effort and lots of hard work and practise, but be assured, it is worth it. With luck you will find that more and more it will not just be medical teams that help, but friends, neighbours, colleagues, strangers (potential new friends) and of course family members. In time that will mean that fewer people will ever get seriously mentally ill as generation by generation society itself will come to learn how to look after each and every one of us far better than ever before. It’s started already but admittedly still has a long, long way to go, but with your help and perseverance it will only ever get better.

Onwards to those happiest of all our days for our children’s sake and that of our children’s children... keep fighting in that way and be assured you’ll get there. Yearn and long for it, work for it and it will surely come just as day always follows night.

We at Mindwalking have only two more postings to make before we close. Please pick up the gauntlet we have thrown down. Please take up the challenge to help educate others although this site we hope will continue to be view by another then another and another 10,000+ readers. It still has hints and tips such as The Selfish Anger Wolves and the Two Chairs exercise to draw upon if ever you are struggling. In that sense alone we will always be with you, rooting for you to continue on your own very personal, very individual journey to pastures new, bright and happy.