It is customary for people to discuss their health issues and address a doctor as soon as they have some physical ailment. However, it is much less common to talk about one’s mental problems and share one’s apprehensions with a specialist. The major reason for such a disparity in attitudes towards different types of diseases is that individuals suffering from mental problems are afraid of being judged or misunderstood. Sometimes, such people do not realize they have problems until it is too late to help them. The present paper will offer a review of three talks on mental issues, the authors of which emphasize the necessity of drawing more attention to this kind of disorder.
Scholars dedicate many efforts to the investigation of severe diseases such as cancer or stroke. At the same time, as Insel (2013) notes, it is time to start spending more resources on the analysis of mental illnesses. The mortality and morbidity of the latter are sometimes higher than those of the former, but these data remain unknown to the majority of people. As Insel (2013) remarks, the onset of mental disorders occurs much earlier than in the case of physical illnesses. Therefore, it is crucial to give sufficient consideration to researching brain damage issues to learn how to prevent or mitigate them.
The other two talks involve the personal experience of mental illness. Longden (2013) tells a story of how she started hearing voices in her head and to what dramatic outcomes that incident lead. The speaker explains that it is extremely important for mentally ill people to feel the support of their family and friends (Longden, 2013). At the same time, the scholar mentions how devastating it may be if there is no one to encourage and help such individuals. After her dramatic experience, the woman decided to become a professional psychiatrist to help others who have encountered the problems she knows from her own life.
The third talk is focused on the problem of depression. As Solomon (2013) remarks, there is some “strange poverty” in many languages regarding the polysemy of the word “depression.” This term is used to denote both “how a kid feels when it rains on his birthday” and “how somebody feels the minute before they commit a suicide” (Solomon, 2013). The speaker mentions that he knows how complicated it may be for a person to admit that he or she suffers from a mental disorder.
All of the talks are focused on a dramatic problem of modern society ─ the underestimated attention to mental illnesses. Two of the speakers have personal experience of such diseases and emphasize the significance of support and help to mentally ill individuals. Both Solomon (2013) and Longden (2013) managed to overcome their problems and became specialists in the sphere of psychology, where they help many other people. As well as these two speakers, Insel (2013) considers brain damages as severe or even more severe than physical disorders. Talking about the main obstacles in psychiatry, Longden (2013) remarks that there exists a wrong approach to managing psychiatric problems. The scholar argues that the important question in psychiatry should be not what is wrong with a person but what has happened to a person (Longden, 2013). The videos demonstrate how necessary it is for the development of society to pay equal attention to all types of health issues. Particularly, it is crucial to deal with mental disorders since they are harder to identify and treat than psychical maladies.
References
Insel, T. (2013). Toward a new understanding of mental illness. [Video file]. Web.
Longden, E. (2013). The voices in my head. [Video file]. Web.
Solomon, A. (2013).Depression, the secret we share. [Video file]. Web.