What's with all these bi-polar people?

[Gandalf]

So Charlie Sheen is bi-winning and now Zeta-Jones has booked herself into rehab because she is apparently bi-polar. Stephen Fry is another one of that is apparently bi-polar. Everyone in the world appears to have some kind of mental problem. Even my own mother has piles of pills for her own apparent issues with depression.

So, my question is this. What is it all about? Are we simply inventing names of mental disorders so that drug companies can sell product or is it simply that we want an excuse for the way we fail to moderate ourselves? Or could it be that these trendy sounding mental illnesses are real and out there?

I have my own emotional swings and roundabouts, but I am never going to go to a doctor just to have him tell me that I am bisexual or bipolar or whatever the buzzword of the day is. I am who I am and I have to deal with my problems my own way. I am a cynic and often look on the bleak side, but does this mean I am a manic depressive. I don't think so. It is just who I am. The whole rehab thing sounds like a cop out a lot of the time. I can understand it for hardened junkies and Ricky Hatton, but Catherine Zeta-Jones might as well book herself a holiday and get away from it all if she is that stressed out. But for every Tom, dick and Harry to be bipolar? It's getting too obvious and seems like a bit of a cop out to me.

What are your thoughts on the growing bi-polar menace?

[CFH]

Mental illness is a very real problem and just because you can deal with your "problems" doesn't mean other people can and it certainly doesn't mean that they don't experience things in a much different way than you do. Honestly, I think your post smacks of ignorance and is typical of the types of attitudes which make it difficult for people with mental health problems to get the help they need.

[Gandalf]

My post definitely contains ignorance because it isn't something I understand particularly well. I just think that everyone goes through stages of being either up or down and that there are also a lot of times when things are quite stable and surely going on that criteria we all have mental problems. It's just life, it seems too glib to trot out the "oh, he's got mental problems" line. It just seems to me an already made excuse for a complete lack of self responsibility for ones own actions. You can look at Charlie Sheen for instance and see that he has issues, but to what extent is it simply a spoiled rich kid who has been able to do what he wants with no checks and balances or is it really a serious mental problem? I just wonder where the line is sometimes. Do we have people booking themselves into rehab because they can't be bothered to look after new born babies? The lines are blurring. Now a good old fashioned schizophrenic is what I refer to as a proper mental case, but depression and all of this? I'm sure there is a lot behind it, but I'm sure a lot more of it is excuse making for not wanting to face up to the cold, hard facts of existence.

I suppose I am quite British in that I believe a stiff upper lip, some moral backbone and a hardened attitude should suffice.

[CFH]

My post definitely contains ignorance because it isn't something I understand particularly well. I just think that everyone goes through stages of being either up or down and that there are also a lot of times when things are quite stable and surely going on that criteria we all have mental problems. It's just life, it seems too glib to trot out the "oh, he's got mental problems" line. It just seems to me an already made excuse for a complete lack of self responsibility for ones own actions. You can look at Charlie Sheen for instance and see that he has issues, but to what extent is it simply a spoiled rich kid who has been able to do what he wants with no checks and balances or is it really a serious mental problem? I just wonder where the line is sometimes. Do we have people booking themselves into rehab because they can't be bothered to look after new born babies? The lines are blurring. Now a good old fashioned schizophrenic is what I refer to as a proper mental case, but depression and all of this? I'm sure there is a lot behind it, but I'm sure a lot more of it is excuse making for not wanting to face up to the cold, hard facts of existence.

I suppose I am quite British in that I believe a stiff upper lip, some moral backbone and a hardened attitude should suffice.

Well, first of all Charlie Sheen is a complete act. I don't buy his shtick (sp?) for a minute.

Second - and I'll warn you right now this is going to get long-winded - I would argue that admitting you have mental health problems and getting help for them is a sure sign of responsibility, not a sign of irresponsibility. Also, people with mental health problems (and I'm speaking in an extremely general way here) don't experience the normal ups and downs of life like a 'normal' person would, that's one of the reasons they're considered mentally ill. Someone with depression can seem to have everything going for them: money, love, a good career etc. and they will still be miserable - that's a medical condition. Many mental health issues cannot be understand rationally because they are inherently irrational in their affects. They're absolutely legitimate medical issues though, just looks at how many people die as a result and how profoundly negative their impacts are on peoples lives.

[Gandalf]

My post definitely contains ignorance because it isn't something I understand particularly well. I just think that everyone goes through stages of being either up or down and that there are also a lot of times when things are quite stable and surely going on that criteria we all have mental problems. It's just life, it seems too glib to trot out the "oh, he's got mental problems" line. It just seems to me an already made excuse for a complete lack of self responsibility for ones own actions. You can look at Charlie Sheen for instance and see that he has issues, but to what extent is it simply a spoiled rich kid who has been able to do what he wants with no checks and balances or is it really a serious mental problem? I just wonder where the line is sometimes. Do we have people booking themselves into rehab because they can't be bothered to look after new born babies? The lines are blurring. Now a good old fashioned schizophrenic is what I refer to as a proper mental case, but depression and all of this? I'm sure there is a lot behind it, but I'm sure a lot more of it is excuse making for not wanting to face up to the cold, hard facts of existence.

I suppose I am quite British in that I believe a stiff upper lip, some moral backbone and a hardened attitude should suffice.

Well, first of all Charlie Sheen is a complete act. I don't buy his shtick (sp?) for a minute.

Second - and I'll warn you right now this is going to get long-winded - I would argue that admitting you have mental health problems and getting help for them is a sure sign of responsibility, not a sign of irresponsibility. Also, people with mental health problems (and I'm speaking in an extremely general way here) don't experience the normal ups and downs of life like a 'normal' person would, that's one of the reasons they're considered mentally ill. Someone with depression can seem to have everything going for them: money, love, a good career etc. and they will still be miserable - that's a medical condition. Many mental health issues cannot be understand rationally because they are inherently irrational in their affects. They're absolutely legitimate medical issues though, just looks at how many people die as a result and how profoundly negative their impacts are on peoples lives.

I look at Charlie Sheen and think "what a cad". I've no idea what he is all about really.

Good points in your second paragraph and I wouldn't say I disagree with any of that. I'm just not sure about it all, I mean I spend my share of time being miserable, but I wouldn't call it a medical condition. It is just a state of existence. It is who I am. Surely it is better to just accept who you are and to deal with it without talking to doctors or taking drugs that affect the balance of your mind. In some respects doesn't doing that mean you are running away from who you are and creating an artificial you? How many people have been depressed in their lives? We can't just medicate everyone when they are having their swings and roundabouts. Where is the line. Do we not rest until everyone is insulated by pharmaceutical companies? Just man up and carry on breathing, ride through the rocky patch.

Now people who cut up their bodies or people who starve themselves, those to me are what I would call obvious and apparent mental health issues. The whole bi-polar and depression area of mental health appears to me all that more murky. Catherine Zeta Jones after all these years is suddenly off to rehab and is bi-polar. It is almost like a celebrity badge or something. Why not just leave it at having a hard year looking after the kids and dealing with a husband with cancer. But no, she is bi-polar as well. It just seems to be all the rage. Life is hard, get on with it. No need to put a label on it so that certain mental experts find their own particular niche within a field.

Maybe I am just too cynical and cold. Obviously there are a lot of people out there going through hell, but at the same time I think a lot of people do simply need to buckle down. Life is not a picnic and that's just a fact of life.

[sonny78]

I have no doubt some people are very ill and need help, but I also think there are a lot of people being misdiagnosed as its easier just to treat everyone

Take a look at this

Link here

How to brand a disease -- and sell a cure

If you want to understand the way prescription drugs are marketed today, have a look at the 1928 book, "Propaganda," by Edward Bernays, the father of public relations in America.

For Bernays, the public relations business was less about selling things than about creating the conditions for things to sell themselves. When Bernays was working as a salesman for Mozart pianos, for example, he did not simply place advertisements for pianos in newspapers. That would have been too obvious.

Instead, Bernays persuaded reporters to write about a new trend: Sophisticated people were putting aside a special room in the home for playing music. Once a person had a music room, Bernays believed, he would naturally think of buying a piano. As Bernays wrote, "It will come to him as his own idea."
Just as Bernays sold pianos by selling the music room, pharmaceutical marketers now sell drugs by selling the diseases that they treat. The buzzword is "disease branding."

To brand a disease is to shape its public perception in order to make it more palatable to potential patients. Panic disorder, reflux disease, erectile dysfunction, restless legs syndrome, bipolar disorder, overactive bladder, ADHD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, even clinical depression: All these conditions were once regarded as rare until a marketing campaign transformed the brand.

Once a branded disease has achieved a degree of cultural legitimacy, there is no need to convince anyone that a drug to treat it is necessary. It will come to him as his own idea.

Disease branding works especially well for two kinds of conditions. The first is the shameful condition that can be destigmatized. For instance, when Pharmacia launched Detrol in the late 1990s, the condition the drug treated was known to doctors as "urge incontinence." Patients called it "accidentally peeing in my pants" and were embarrassed to bring it up with their physicians.

Pharmacia fixed the problem by rebranding the condition as "overactive bladder." Whereas "incontinence" suggested weakness and was associated mainly with elderly women, the phrase "overactive bladder" evoked a supercharged organ frantically working overtime.

To qualify for a diagnosis of "overactive bladder," patients did not actually have to lose bladder control." They simply needed to go to the bathroom a lot.

The vice president of Pharmacia, Neil Wolf, explained the branding strategy in a 2002 presentation called "Positioning Detrol: Creating a Disease." By creating the disease of "overactive bladder," Wolf claimed, Pharmacia created a market of 21 million potential patients.

Another good candidate for branding is a condition that can be plausibly portrayed as under-diagnosed. Branding such a condition assures potential patients that they are part of a large and credible community of sufferers. For example, in 1999, the FDA approved the antidepressant Paxil for the treatment of "social anxiety disorder," a condition previously known as "shyness."

In order to convince shy people they had social anxiety disorder, GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of Paxil, hired a PR firm called Cohn and Wolfe. Cohn and Wolfe put together a public awareness campaign called "Imagine being allergic to people," which was allegedly sponsored by a group called the "Social Anxiety Disorders Coalition."

GlaxoSmithKline also recruited celebrities like Ricky Williams, the NFL running back, and paid them to give interviews to the press about their own social anxiety disorder. Finally, they hired academic psychiatrists working on social anxiety disorder and sent them out on the lecture circuit in the top 25 media markets.

The results were remarkable. In the two years before Paxil was approved for social anxiety, there were only about 50 references to social anxiety disorder in the press. But in 1999, during the PR campaign, there were over a billion references.

Within two years Paxil had become the seventh most profitable drug in America, and Cohn and Wolfe had picked up an award for the best PR campaign of 1999. Today, social anxiety disorder, far from being rare, is often described as the third most common mental illness in the world.

It is hard to brand a disease without the help of physicians, of course. So drug companies typically recruit academic "thought leaders" to write and speak about any new conditions they are trying to introduce. It also helps if the physicians believe the branded condition is dangerous.

When AstraZeneca introduced Prilosec (and later Nexium) for heartburn, for example, it famously repositioned heartburn as "gastroesophageal reflux disease," or GERD. But it also commissioned research to demonstrate the devastating consequences of failing to treat it.

If all drugs were harmless, disease branding would be relatively harmless, too. But no drug is completely benign.

For example, Detrol can make elderly people delirious and may cause memory problems. Paxil is associated with sexual dysfunction and dependence. It also carries a black-box warning for suicide in children and adolescents. Side effects like these are a part of every drug. But they are never part of the brand.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Carl Elliott.

[ryanman]

Mental illness is a very real problem and just because you can deal with your "problems" doesn't mean other people can and it certainly doesn't mean that they don't experience things in a much different way than you do. Honestly, I think your post smacks of ignorance and is typical of the types of attitudes which make it difficult for people with mental health problems to get the help they need.

[BIG H]

Mental illness is a very real problem and just because you can deal with your "problems" doesn't mean other people can and it certainly doesn't mean that they don't experience things in a much different way than you do. Honestly, I think your post smacks of ignorance and is typical of the types of attitudes which make it difficult for people with mental health problems to get the help they need.

I haven't read past this post (and Mile you know I love you dude) but CFH has nailed it with that post.

I am not Bi-Polar or depressed (I have been depressed and it is a living hell!!!) Pisses me off when people say things like 'pull your self together' etc, you wouldn't ask a person in a wheelchair to get stop being lazy and get up and walk!

[BIG H]

I've just read some more of this thread and to be honest it is winding me up so much I can't read anymore.

There is some silly cunt bird on daytime T.V that was spouting off about overweight people the other day and saying "it's quite simple, you just need to have some self control and discipline" Just eat less and exercise more" "There is no excise for being overweight, it is just greed and laziness" My advise to her and anybody else is keep you mouth shut about things you know nothing about. Yes, some people are lazy fat greedy wasters and regards depressions, some people have a couple of bad days and start with "Ooh I'm depressed" but don't generalize, mental health is a huge issue. Why can people be physcical unwell, but not mentally. When somebody has stomach bug, should they just tell themselves that they are better and then it will be so? The brain is so complex and even the slightest imbalance somewhere can cause huge problems for people.

Anybody that thinks depression is for the weak and that that everybody has bad days and you should just 'pull yourself together and be strong', I sincerely hope you get severe clinical depression and then I would like to hear your views on the subject.

[Kev]

I've just read some more of this thread and to be honest it is winding me up so much I can't read anymore.

There is some silly cunt bird on daytime T.V that was spouting off about overweight people the other day and saying "it's quite simple, you just need to have some self control and discipline" Just eat less and exercise more" "There is no excise for being overweight, it is just greed and laziness" My advise to her and anybody else is keep you mouth shut about things you know nothing about. Yes, some people are lazy fat greedy wasters and regards depressions, some people have a couple of bad days and start with "Ooh I'm depressed" but don't generalize, mental health is a huge issue. Why can people be physcical unwell, but not mentally. When somebody has stomach bug, should they just tell themselves that they are better and then it will be so? The brain is so complex and even the slightest imbalance somewhere can cause huge problems for people.

Anybody that thinks depression is for the weak and that that everybody has bad days and you should just 'pull yourself together and be strong', I sincerely hope you get severe clinical depression and then I would like to hear your views on the subject.

so are you saying the reason you are fat is because you are also mental?

[BIG H]

I've just read some more of this thread and to be honest it is winding me up so much I can't read anymore.

There is some silly cunt bird on daytime T.V that was spouting off about overweight people the other day and saying "it's quite simple, you just need to have some self control and discipline" Just eat less and exercise more" "There is no excise for being overweight, it is just greed and laziness" My advise to her and anybody else is keep you mouth shut about things you know nothing about. Yes, some people are lazy fat greedy wasters and regards depressions, some people have a couple of bad days and start with "Ooh I'm depressed" but don't generalize, mental health is a huge issue. Why can people be physcical unwell, but not mentally. When somebody has stomach bug, should they just tell themselves that they are better and then it will be so? The brain is so complex and even the slightest imbalance somewhere can cause huge problems for people.

Anybody that thinks depression is for the weak and that that everybody has bad days and you should just 'pull yourself together and be strong', I sincerely hope you get severe clinical depression and then I would like to hear your views on the subject.

so are you saying the reason you are fat is because you are also mental?

That is absolutely possible mate