Opinion: Seeing Beyond The Surface
Mental health issues including psychotic disorders aren't just in people's heads, but rather they are worsened by life conditions. No one should expect someone suffering from any kind of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to just magically heal with just medication and intensive therapy. The treatment of many mental health issues has to include the improvement of that individual's life. No one should expect a dyslexic women to just learn how to read in the library, if she is struggling with food insecurities. No one should expect a depressed individual to suddenly feel happy after going through long-term therapy, if they are actively being abused by a significant other. The flaws in the systems don't enable victims to heal with just references of resources, rather they heal by a sincere helping hand that isn't just money thrown at them. No one should expect a teenager who has a lot panic attacks to feel less anxious by putting her in a new social circle, when she is still grieving the loss of someone she loved. No one should expect an alcoholic/drug addict to just go through rehab and not relapse, when they are still in the same high crime area and actively dealing with police brutality.
The best change starts at home, and it starts by recognizing the systems of power that leave people unchecked. The recognition of these systems that "put a man down, to lift a man up" is part of the process of acknowledging the effect they take up. Acknowledging the factors holding people back doesn't include advising those struggling with mental health issues to just "man up" or "have a positive mind." Trying to explain the system to someone who has just been failed by the system is pointless. Help to a person in distress shouldn't come in the form of law enforcement escalating issues through personal responses. A person in distress should not be taken as a personal attack by social services workers. Offering help to a person struggling with mental health issues doesn't mean shutting them down. Brutality in mental health and medical services is unwanted and ineffective in helping a person struggling, such is a case of someone who throws dust at someone crying so they stop crying from eye pain.
Yes it might seem like a wake up call for the person crying, but the only memory they make from that experience is trauma. Brutality never solved any problems without resulting in death and or injuries. When a person is fleeing harm, and their health issues are severe the response should be welcoming. Even though burnout may happen in any career, people who are feeling broken down by their career should take a break. It isn't fair for a person needing help to face more backlash, because the person paid to do that job is going through occupational burnout. The result of systems of oppression colliding with inferiority complexes is unfortunate, but shouldn't turn into a humiliating master-servant relationship. When help is sought by a struggling individual, and those who are in authority are playing hard to get then it's time for that individual to walk away. It's never to late to walk away from a service that advertises itself as caring, when in reality it is nothing but a facade.
The mirage of helping a person struggling with mental health issues is that right off the bat, this individual isn't just another crazy criminal. This is a mirage, because a person seeking services to feel better isn't inherently flawed. Some mental health issues are circumstantial, others are congenital, and or even as a result of abuse/neglect. Criminalizing the poor for their poverty is a crime in itself. Criminalizing the victim for the crime inflicted on them is a crime in itself. Criminalizing the integrity of charity for a person truly in need is a crime in itself. It's not the passerby that can offer the best help, it's the family that stays faithful behind close doors. Medical/mental health services should stop expecting someone who is bleeding from a wound to remain calm. How many people will remain calm when their whole livelihood is passing in front of their eyes? How many people who aren't already dead are going to die that moment? My point is that stressful situations, and issues that stop our progress stir up many emotions.
One of those emotions is the desperation for the escape from harm, and the deliverance of glad tidings. It is healthy to cry, the eye should be tearing up everyday anyways. Forcing someone to numb their own feeling for the so-called welfare of others is disturbing to say the least. People come with many identities, such that a man may be a father, a son, a brother, an uncle, but also an athletic director as an example. Each of those within itself holds a value to the individual, and anything that strains those values can cause the collision of others. Muffling the screams of pain is not the way to go, and if that's the way these business want to run then it comes with a price.
The price of denying valuable and resourceful mental health help affects us all. In that the inability of communities to collaborate with the desperation of survival, definitely leads to a cost. Some costs are worthy of being paid, and others still remain unpaid. Better to pay people in actual welfare systems, then to pay them in hospital visits. People can only handle so much, and to spread people too thin in order to avoid addressing them is abnormal. Life is both simple and complex at the same time, and it takes a careful eye to recognize the precariousness of the mind.