Huffinton Post is a fun Newspaper I like to check out once in a while.  Here is an article to follow up with my last post about Charlie Sheen. 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/urizenus-sklar/charlie-sheen-nihilism_b_838065.html

Cheers

Glamorizing Mental Illness

People who live with a serious mental illness do not tend to be open and public about it.  Mental illness to many is stigmatized and can be a shameful experience.  Imagine having no control over behaviors, overwhelmed by irrational thoughts always swimming around in your mind, confused by a delusional world and reality, constantly feeling the need for attention from others, unanswered anger, continuous sadness, extreme loneliness, do I really need to go on?  The feelings that go along with mental illness are nothing close to glamorous and the people suffering have pasts that haunt them, they resent who they are, they just want a peace of mind.  Why then, is mental illness being glamorized by celebrities who are going through the turmoil of mental illness? 

The obvious answer to this question is, because they can.  They are already in the spotlight.  Public awareness can be a good thing for mental illness sufferers, however, when its belligerent and negative attention seeking, it is no longer an appropriate way to cope, and it is giving mental illness, and those living in it, a poor image.

Over the past few months, the Charlie Sheen escapades have been talked about as much as the biggest political events occurring all over the world.  Although this man is in the entertainment business, his outrages and comedic attempts are consistent with symptoms, such as, loss of control, impulsivity, anger and rage, and possible psychosis.  He is painting an absolute false image of mental illness.  He is making mental illness “funny.”  And although, humor is a natural and adaptive coping strategy, he is being hurtful and mean about it.  It is not necessarily Sheen who has let this show go too far, show business has allowed it, and at other’s expenses.  Recently I listened on the radio that he was going on tour and his tickets sold out in minutes.  REALLY? 

His rants and foul language are being tolerated because “he is mentally sick.”  When someone is mentally sick, they need to seek help, not allow it to be in the spotlight getting the highest ratings in Hollywood! As I noted earlier, awareness is good, however,  he is allowing terms like “insane,” “crazy,” and “lunatic” be accepted.  He is giving himself this label. This label is transferable, others should see him as judgmental to others.  It is completely CRAZY to be allowing him to be using those labels in the first place, and he is allowing the incorrect and degrading terms to be used for someone who is obviously experiencing mental illness.  Should Sheen be allowed to continue his career in entertainment?  Yes, of course, that’s what he does.  I would want nothing more than to see my clients be able to continue and pursue careers if they were functionally able to do so.  But Sheen is not functionally able to do so.  He is, in my opinion out of control and it is a sad vision.  He needs help.  He is not functioning when he is putting messages out into the public eye that being “insane” is a party and glamorous life. 

Awareness for mental health is taking positive actions, especially in Canada since Clara Hughes, speed skater and Olympic medalist teamed up with Bell Canada. She came out to the public about her combat with depression and started her “Lets Talk” campaign, which encouraged people to open up about mental illness and allow it to be accepted in society.  This type of awareness not only allows people to feel listened to, it creates empathy, support, and advocacy.  Sheen on the other hand, consumes society with extreme ideas about being mentally ill and people buy into it as entertainment. The last few months of Sheen on television has made mental illness a joke, its turned into celebrity scandal and gossip, making people with addiction and mental health look crazy.

I hope people who know anything about mental illness, and I know there are more than one could even fathom, see Sheen, shake their head and pray for him and others to seek the needed help in order to ease their minds and accept who they are and I hope they create awareness about mental illness and what it really means to affectively cope with their inner conflicts.

I am Resilient!

As I entered the lunchroom with my co-workers we began talking about a few students we have been working with.  The students we work with come from very stressful and dysfunctional situations. As we were talking about the hardships our students face, situations most of the staff would have a very hard time imagining, but it made me think.  How can some people go through their lives hardship after hardship?  This is the life of many people on this planet and how do they continue to get through these situations.  We see students everyday, attending school to achieve a better life than they have lived so far in their lives or better lives than they witnessed their parents having. It is amazing what one human can get hit with and still be able to communicate, get to places they need to go, care for a child, and the list goes on, seemingly as though nothing has happened. In many of my students, I find it most interesting, what the human mind and body is capable of.  This is the idea of human psychological resiliency. What a great capacity rooted deep into each one of us. For better understanding of this term, Psychological Resiliency refers to an individual's capacity to withstand stressors and not manifest psychology dysfunction, such as mental illness or persistent negative mood.  Psychological stressors or "risk factors" are often considered to be experiences of major acute or chronic stress such as death of someone else, chronic illness, and sexual, physical or emotional abuse, fear, and unemployment and community violence.

I just feel this is an amazing characteristic human’s carry.  When we think we cannot imagine these major stressors happening or when we say we could never deal with these tough situations we see others dealing with, we can back up and say, we can!  We all have this incredible resiliency within ourselves.  So why then, do some people seem as though they are not coping?  The three explanations I have come up with is this:

1)    Is it an environmental result that either gives us a higher tolerance for stressful events? Does repeated risk factors give us a better resiliency? Or do we have less resiliency with  the lack of exposure to highly stressful events?

2)    Or is resiliency innate?  Do we have this built-in ability or inability to cope with stressful situations? 

3)    My own personal query: Is mental illness or risk-taking behavioural problems the result of a lack of resiliency?  This is an interesting question to ponder and I am challenged, it may be a question that is unanswerable, however, we can look to find what others have decided about our human capacity to be resilient in the toughest situations.

Some therapeutic approaches to intervening with at-risk children and youth come from promoting resiliency as a skill.  This skill is believed to be a technique that will help children cope in order to succeed in school.  It is used as a way to teach coping strategies, which is where the terms coping and resiliency become interchangeable, which, I believe to be two separate ideas. Coping skills can be taught, but resiliency, we do not know at this point.  I want to say no. Are coping skills and resiliency different? We have read into the definition and theory of resiliency in humans, coping follows this path:

Coping is to face and deal with responsibilities, problems, or difficulties, especially successfully or in a calm or adequate manner. 

I like to believe our resiliency is one’s personal attachment and recognition of God. Are we following the path of solving problems before they emerge into bigger problems?  Perhaps without the vision of God, the path is less clear.

I would like to leave this question open-ended, I would like to leave it as an amazing aspect of Human Lives.  Next time you hear of a situation and think to yourself or say, “I could never deal with that, or how do they still function each day,” think to yourself,

I AM RESILIENT!