Power of the Pill

It really pisses me off when people say things about mental illness like, "I'm just against medication. Doctors want to give you a pill to make your problems go away, and they want to call you bipolar when really you just can't deal with the normal ups and downs of life."

I'm paraphrasing here, but this came from one of my coworkers that I'm actually pretty close to, and who should know me well enough NOT to say stuff like that. I could have replied that if she knew anything about mental illness she wouldn't say something like that. (She's getting her master's in counseling, by the way.) And she wouldn't be saying that about someone who had cancer or diabetes. She wouldn't be insisting a physical disease could be cured by force of the will, so why do people say that about mental illness? Instead all I said was, "Well, medication has turned my life around." Which is completely true.This is why I don't talk to many people about my anxiety and mood disorder - they either see you as a disease instead of a person ("I'm bipolar") or they dismiss your suffering altogether and tell you to get over it.

I know this doesn't seem like it has much to do with feminism, but mental health is very ingrained into my sense of feminism, and I actually hope to study feminist psychology in graduate school. Women are far more likely to present with major depression, borderline personality and eating disorders - don't you think old patriarchal concepts of the "hysterical female" have anything to do with that? Think about it.We also live in a society that stresses frontierist individualism and tells us to suck up our problems, that we can get through anything by strength of will or the power of God. (I actually read a book on anxiety that said that very thing.) And we feel forced to do it alone - we are isolated from our support networks, and that's something no medication can fix. I think men especially feel this, so I don't believe that women are depressed more than men are - I just think we teach our boys that it is a weakness to reach out for help or admit their suffering.

Don't misunderstand me, I don't look at any medication as a miracle worker that will solve any problem. That's why I'm in counseling as well. Nor is medication the right treatment for all people with psychological disorders. All psychotropic meds do is get you functional enough to actually deal with your problems. It's hard to do that effectively when all you want to do is slice up your wrists or you think you can fly off the rooftop. And that's all chemical. You cannot just "try" to be happier. What you can do is seek treatment and learn to manage and cope with it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take my meds so I can get out of bed in the morning and deal with life.