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" for all that the conference was supposed to be about mental illnesses, it turned out to focus far more on *sane* family members and friends of the mentally ill, rather than on people with mental illnesses themselves. This tendency was  exemplified in the President's speech, when he stated:  "We all know somebody - a family member, a friend, a neighbor - who has struggled or will struggle with mental health issues at some point in their lives." Note the construction of the sentence: "We all know somebody - a family member, a friend, a neighbor - who has struggled with mental illness." The person with mental illness here is always someone else. They are always removed from ourselves. They are the people we help, the people we are sad for, the people we want to save. The people who are sick, the people who are hurting, the people with the problems - they are categorically not us. They are other. They are, moreover, specifically not the implied audience of the sentence. The implied audience is the people who "know somebody' with a mental illness. Obama probably wanted to evoke sympathy for people with mental illnesses. But in doing so, he reinforced the trope of the mentally ill as the "other" - as people who aren't worth speaking to, and about, directly. Despite the fact that one in five Americans suffer, or will suffer, from a mental illness, and thus make up a fairly sizeable portion of the audience."

"The "mental illness" paradigm-an insidious cancer: I find it interesting to turn the "medical model" language of "mental illness" back onto itself and consider this entire "mental illness" paradigm as acting like an insidious cancer (the difference in my use of the term "cancer" here being that I'm readily acknowledging that this is just a metaphor). Cancer is essentially what occurs when a cell of an organism "forgets" its role as a member of a larger whole and turns against the organism, becoming consumed only with its own reproduction. Using this metaphor, we can say the "mental illness" paradigm fosters this turning one part of a whole against itself. We see this taking place interpersonally between members of our society as we develop ever increasing fear of those labelled "mentally ill," and we see this taking place intrapersonally as we develop ever increasing fear and suspicion of our own "unusual" or "extreme" subjective experiences. We see signs of this cancer spreading throughout nearly every branch of contemporary Western society-our schools and education systems, our media, our government policies, our way of trying to make sense of ourselves and others' experiences and behavior, and of course our health care systems."

"It's easy to blame Big Pharma and the DSM for creating trendy mental illnesses, but the real problem is psychiatry's blindness to culture."

"Mental health professionals across all professions - psychiatry, psychology, social work, etc. - should be more aware that this loss of self identity is a very real component of some people's mental illness and subsequent treatment. It should be addressed as a regular component of mental health treatment, especially when the loss is acutely felt. Because across all of healthcare, we are quick to dehumanize patients and focus only on the treatment of symptoms. Maybe it's a way some professionals seek to keep their patients at arm's length - not to become too emotionally connected to them. But in doing so, it also sends a (perhaps unintentional) message to the patient - you are only a constellation of symptoms to me. That's all we'll focus on, that's all we'll treat. As professionals and clinicians, we can do better. We should do better to not turn someone in emotional pain into a simple diagnosis or label. If we think of Linda as simply "Oh, the bipolar woman in room 213," we've lost our humanity and our focus."

Is Loneliness a Public Policy Problem? Zach McDade May 23, 2013 9 Comments Is Loneliness a Public Policy Problem? Shutterstock inShare3 Share Print Share on emailEmail Urban Institute MORE FROM THE URBAN INSTITUTE: The "Disconnected Youth" Paradigm Stemming the Tide of Federal Prison Growth The Continued Decline of North Korea Is a Case for Inclusive Politics A fascinating recent article in The New Republic reviewed a body of new science documenting the pernicious physiological effects of loneliness. Researchers have shown that loneliness-more formally, the want of intimacy-exacerbates a host of ailments, including Alzheimer's disease, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, and even cancer. The share of Americans who report "not feeling close to people" at any given time is 30 percent and growing, and deemed by some a social health crisis. Should public policy researchers and practitioners care about something as intangible and inaccessible as loneliness? I'll give you three reasons why I think we should. First, some background… Feeling lonely actually sends misleading hormonal signals that physically change the molecular structure of the brain. According to the article, this "wrenches a whole slew" of bodily systems out of whack, causing loneliness to be seen by some as a risk factor for death as great as smoking. Who tends to be affected by loneliness, according to this research? Women more than men, blacks more than whites, the less-educated, the unemployed, the retired, anyone different. In other words, many of the same people affected by today's long-term unemployment and wealth disparities, persistent poverty, and isolation. If loneliness exacerbates these ills, it will further diminish people's ability to engage in economically and socially valuable and productive activities, which in turn could exacerbate loneliness. Three reasons why loneliness should be a p

"Evidence suggests that emotional distress - and all major psychiatric disorders - are associated with a state of excessive inward attention. And inward attention that is excessive in its intensity or duration could easily become pathological or troublesome."

"Shortly after Prozac became the best-selling drug in the world in the early 1990s, I proposed that there was little or no evidence for efficacy, but considerable evidence that the drug would worsen depression and cause severe behavioral abnormalities. I attributed much of the problem to "compensatory changes" in neurotransmitters as the brain resists the drug effect. Since then, in a series of books and articles, I've documented antidepressant-induced clinical worsening and some of its underlying physical causes. Now the idea has gained ground in the broader research community and has recently been named "tardive dysphoria.""