Mental Health

Sanity is a relative term. Who decides? If there are several thousand species of birds, some of which have only very, very minor differences from another bird, why do we continue to categorise humans into one species with six sub-species: oriental, white, black, asian, aboriginal and arab?

If we can understand the concept of diversity in birds why can we not understand it in humans? So, is an autistic person different or just another species of human being? Who decides they are mentally not equal?

Schizophrenia is said to be present in one form or another in 15% of the western population. The population of Europe is 738 million, which means 110 million people are suffering from one of the several variants of this debilitating mental illness – if these figures are correct. If we add America’s 304 million and Canada’s 34 million inhabitants the population figure climbs to 1,076 million people., which means the total number affected by this one mental illness would be 161 million people. A staggering number.

Others quote 2% as being affected not 15% but that still equates to almost 8 million people in the USA and Canada, 15 million people across Europe and 1.22 million in the UK. These numbers are huge and do not include the myriad of other mental illnesses, like depression, that have affected Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edar Allan Poe, Billy Joel, Heath Ledger, J.K. Rowling and Tennessee Williams among a very long list of others.

However, if we regard schizophrenics, for example, as a variety of human species we begin to see a much clearer picture of how different people are.  Look at this logically, we humans look vastly different we walk, talk, think and move differently. We look at other men/women, cars, food, places to live/visit, clothes, etc., differently. A dazzling array of differences and yet the scientists tell us we are one species but a bird with a tiny speck less red on its beak is an entirely different species to another with a very slightly larger speck. They claim there are over 10,000 different species of birds. Are we really expected to take this ‘science’ seriously?

If we saw those with ‘mental illnesses’, whatever illness it may be, as just another type we could better relate, better manage and better integrate into our population as a whole. Why is it that human intolerance is so high that it prevents us from doing this? Some countries are so distrustful of foreigners, France for example, that they are defined by their xenophobia. Are they really the same species as New Zealanders or Canadians who could not be more open or welcoming?

Is this the natural condition of humans? Are we predisposed to casting out all that does not resemble us mentally and physically? Is that how nature works? If so, why are the birds doing okay? Is it just a human thing?

Politicians ignore mental health but it is quite clear from these numbers it should be a priority. Let me put this into context, in the USA & Canada there are 1.3 million heart attacks per year. In other words more than five times as many people suffer from mental illness with the accompanying net loss to that continent’s net economy.

The figures for the UK are 275,000 with about 120,000 of these being fatal. This means four and a half times as many people suffer from schizophrenia. This is only one of many types of mental illness. The net cost to the economy is huge in terms of lost income. The cost in human terms is even bigger. People are cut off, excluded and left out even when they have a gift, a talent or a brilliance to add to the population.

How much money is being pumped into heart research and surgery when, as latest evidence shows, a high percentage (more than 30%) is caused by smoking and smoke-filled environments? In other words, largely self-inflicted.

Where is the corresponding research into mental differences? Maybe a very large number of those defined as mentally ill are not ill at all, for their type, they are just different and it is those differences we need to understand. This will take in the first instance a decision to do it and there is not a single politician anywhere willing to take that step.

Mental health is neither sexy nor a vote catcher in societies whose primary aim is to become a useless ‘personality’.