Guardian Rant with a little realistic insight

This article had a lot of activity from the #mentalhealth community on twitter. Mixing stats and research with personal opinion is a perilous game - evidenced by the comments after this article, which have as much interest as the article itself. It gives insight that the expression of public opinion around mental health is very active, but naturally is also confined to those already engaged in the issue.  On the plus side these comments are also a cautionary reminder that mental health is a sensitive area and there are many people with a lots of personal experiences and opinions.

Are doctors the guardians of our wellbeing? And if they are then perhaps, family and friends or teachers and politicians should be part of the network of guardians we entrust our wellbeing in.

If doctors – rather than politicians or teachers or priests or friends and family – are to be the guardians of our wellbeing, then doctors really should be provided with new kinds of "treatments" for their patients... : anything that builds up the individual's inner resources and allows emotions to be reflected on can't be bad.

 And the following comment summarizes well the discussion that followed quite well:

• AllyF

  6 September 2011 7:01PM
  I broadly share some of the concerns expressed in this article, but some of it also worries me.
  It's one thing to argue that pharmacological remedies are over-prescribed and ineffective compared to social support, exercise regimes, healthier lifestyle advice etc. This does not mean that mental illness is not widespread and serious. Both can be true. 
  
  Modern society makes us ill. Workplace stress, social dislocation and alienation, poor living envirionments, financial worries, social inequality, economic problems and unemployment, all these things have a significant and measurable effect on mental health. 
  
  Tell me Lisa, which of the 165 million Europeans do you want to slice out of the statistics for mental ill health? The alcoholics drinking their consciousness away in Eastern Europe? The working women with post-natal depression? The self-harmers? The suicide risks? The eating disorders? Those paralysed and housebound by social phobia or panic attacks? Those who can't get out of bed in the morning due to depression? Who are you talking about? Come on, spell it out!
  Yes, I am quite sure that the total figure of 165 million includes some "worried well." But unless you have some kind of research or estimate as to how many, what proportion we are talking about, it is hard to see what your point is.
  
  The reality is that mental illness is still widely misunderstood and misrepresented. People with serious, life-threatening illnesses are regularly told to "buck up" and "pull themselves together." Outright hostility and denial remains commonplace. And now even our benefits system is pulling out all the stops to push seriously ill people off disability benefits because they're supposedly not ill enough to be out of work.
  
  Against that context, it is actually seriously unhelpful to be adding to the narrative that portrays many people with mental illnesses as frauds and malingerers. 
  
  I hope you're proud of yourself.
  

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/06/mental-illness-medicalising-normality