Your parents' approach to mental health conditions

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What was the attitude of your family of origin towards mental health disorders? Did it somehow affect the way in which your parents dealt with you? I mean - do you think that you'd be taken to psychologists/psychiatrists (if you weren't) if your parents didn't find it shameful (if that was this case)?

My mother was always hypersensitive when it comes to the field of mental health. She's one of those people who seem to believe that most psychiatrists chose this profession because the voices told them so She still remembers one psychologist who saw her, currently deceased, mother and my grandmother when she was lethally ill - according to her, this guy was a weirdo although she never could explain it to me why she thought so ( I was absent during this conversation with him; my grandma was a simple minded peasant who had to be taken to him because she wouldn't deal with it on her own so mom went there with her). When I asked her barely a couple of days ago what problems she thought people should meet shrinks and psychologists about, she mentioned only two such things: depression and mental illnesses, because as she said surprised, what other problems people could have to see such specialists about them and later she mistook a psychiatrist for a psychologist She's pretty sensitive and mentally weak so it happened to her from time to time that facing stressful life situations, she had sedatives prescribed but these are all situations mom is able to understand when it comes to seeing mental health specialists. She once told me she'd prefer her child to have a very severe, life threatening somatic illness than a mental illness like schizophrenia.

It is hard to get past such a stigma really. I should have been taken to a child psychologist at various times in my development. I saw one at my elementary school who told my mom "she marches to the beat of a different drummer". this was in the 70s. So after that she just explained everything with that phrase, which made me believe that the rest of our family thought I was "slow". I was a very troubled teen and internalized everything, which led to anorexia and attempted suicide. But that was surely not a reason to see a psychiatrist, right, I just marched to the beat of a different drummer.

Now my mom is all for psychiatric intervention- she goes herself. I think most of that change came from her education- she finally got a degree in social work in her 40s, so of course she is definitely more in favor of treatment. I could have really used some treatment as a kid, though.

I have seen both extremes. My mother, who's aunt suffers from schizophrenia, has never had issues with my mental health. If anything, the knowledge of mental health helped her to cope when I was going through it. She never spoke badly of mental illness although she did admit she was frightened of her aunty who got violent with her once while she was unmedicated (back in the 60's). I've always felt proud of my great Grandmother who refused to put her in an institution which was, of course, the main course of action for schizophrenics in those days. My grandma has a good relationship with her sister and she dealt with my problems better than anyone. No 'OH MY GOD, well she didn't get that from us...' Just saying, 'that's just the way she is let's help her now'.

Now we go to my father and his family. My father, who has in the past suffered from paranoia, anxiety and two or three mental breakdowns, refuses to talk about mental health. People with schizophrenic are dangerous violent people, All autistics can be 'cured'. people with Downs syndrome are all the same... Yeah I know, very black and white views, but that's my dad. His views are partly due to the fact that he lived most of his life in an isolated village in Yorkshire and therefore he only saw the mediarised versions of illnesses. He flipped out big time when a doctor said I had Tourettes because he thought it was a 'swearing disease'. There is a lot of mental disorder in my father's side. None diagnosed. Mainly symptoms of AD/HD but my granny was unusual, quite obsessive. My Grandad refused to let me and my brother and cousins (I was 12) come to my granny's funeral because watching him cry could 'damage' us. If anything NOT going damaged me.

You will be glad to hear that my father is slowly but surely coming round to the idea that the doctor ISN'T a quack. He now agrees reluctantly that I have AS and Tourettes. I still get nowhere with the other relatives, I just try to act.... less like me!

LOL, Of course everything that has to do with mental illness had to come from my father and his family. I had social workers growing up so I was seen by them but I never saw a psychologist until I was almost an adult and that was only once. My father died a long time ago so I really don't know much about him or his family. My mother feels its shameful to have any mental illness even depression (I have major depression). She uses it as an excuse and I get blamed for other people's wrong behavior, ie; my step-father sexually abused me. My mother will say she's (me) mentally ill, she sees a shrink, that never happened, its all in her head. Now that she knows I have AS, I'm mentally Ill x 2. My Mother, "Are you sure they don't have a pill you can take for that?"

A few people in my family are very very different and the others cannot see it, they see them the same way they saw me before I got my diagnosis, "just a very private person." My aunt and uncle are the only ones who believe me, even my sister and mother do not. But everyone in my family are so afraid of doctors telling them that there is something "wrong" with them that they won't even call an ambulance if something bad happens.

My family accepts me, or acts like they do, and in return I don't bother them with not keeping in contact with each other.

"My mother will say she's (me) mentally ill, she sees a shrink, that never happened, its all in her head. Now that she knows I have AS, I'm mentally Ill"

I have a cousin (she's my first cousin's daughter) who is 11 and moderately ret*d - the psychologists recently described her cognitive abilities and general level of emotional and mental development as typical of an average 4-5 year old. Recently I made a mention about my cousin's intellectual disability to my mother and she said: "But you have this inborn disorder you said about (I told her indeed though I didn't give her its name) so aren't you ret*d too?" Mom thinks that if there's something wrong with your head, it means that either you are mentally ill or mentally handicapped, it escapes my understanding how she could compare me to the girl who at 11 still almost cannot read and isn't even able to do her homework AT ALL (she's one grade lower than her peers) - now she's taken into foster care and it's probably the other kids in there who have to do it for her because otherwise she wouldn't be able to do it EVER.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha!! !!.............where do I begin?


Ummm....let's see....nobody believed I HAD any until I received the results of my first neuropsych test when I was 23.

I was "lazy", "unmotivated", "emotional disturbed", "manipulative"....you name it. To some extent....my parents STILL don't believe I have any serious neuropsychological problems. They certainly don't believe they are as severe as my own self-observations over forty years have led me to believe. Since I was seven years old, I insisted there was something seriously wrong with my brain and I was summarily dismissed by EVERYONE every time I brought it up.

In fact.....without going into the complicated details...I was pretty much self-diagnosed at 14. Let's just say it was the fairly typical manifestations of NVLD a few psychologists had a label for before anything was known about NVLD. That is....many cases (and Dr. Byron Rourke made this claim in his..."Nonverbal Learning Disabilities...the Syndrome and the Model") of NVLD were once viewed as an "Immature-Inadequate personality disorder". I read about the characterisitics of this so-called PD in an encyclopedia long before I (and most other people) had ever heard of NVLD. They pretty much fit me perfectly and then it all made sense (to a point) after I was *Dx-ed* with NVLD and after reading Rourke's aforementioned book. Prior to all this....I was Dx-ed with everything under the sun. Depression, Anxiety, Narcissistic PD, Borderline PD, "Psychotic signs", Bipolar disorder, OCD, etc.....NEVER NVLD until I had a full neuropsych eval....it wasn't even suspected until then. None of the psychologists I saw up until that point took my thoughts about this whole "Immature-Inadequate PD" seriously. It never once occured to them that this just MIGHT be an indication of something a TAD unusual. Something these pompous, Freud-fetishizing, Harvard-educated turds couldn't even conceptualize since it was beyond the common colds and cancers of mental health problems they're used to dealing with like depression or schizophrenia. Rather....it was closer to the Progeria of mental health problems and these idiots never pay any attention to what their children-of-a-lesser-god patients say anyway. Why should they?....They are big blue-blooded Ph.D's from the Ivy league and their patients are unfortunate subhumans who will probably wind up babbling to themselves behind a dumpster somewhere.

For all intents and purposes.....i've had to be my own neuropsychologist/neurologist throughout my life and i'm not the least bit qualified. I expected much more from these brilliant alienists who use more multisyllabic terms than any Marxist academic could ever dream of.

I grew up in a church environment where mental illness was looked at as a character flaw resulting from not having a good relationship with God.

There were a few times I asked my parents for help, but nothing happened. I did finally get to see a therapist a year after my dad died because my mom thought I wasn't grieving my dad's death properly (I didn't cry, I wasn't sad....) I only got to go a few months.

My family knows nothing about my mental illness. Based on my mother's reactions to my problems when I was a teenager I feel her reaction would be harmful to me (as they were back then).

Ugh! I hate it when churches do that. I have had experiences with one particular church where it was literally preached from the pulpit that depression meant you "weren't right with God".

On the other hand, most churches are no more rejecting of people with mental illness and general weird-brainedness than any other organization, religious or not. Some are more accepting. I've noticed some disabled people (mental as well as physical) at my church... one twentyish guy switched churches after they threw him and his mom out of his old one for "making noise during the music". Apparently if you have CP and cognitive disabilities and love music, you are obligated to either magically learn to sing on key or else keep quiet to let the normal people worship in peace. I couldn't believe how evil that was, to kick the guy out; he's not even loud. Last I heard, it was "make a joyful noise", not, "stick your nose in the air and sing soulless technically perfect arias".

I don't think this has much to do with churches; it has a great deal to do with willfully ignorant human beings using anything they can grab as an excuse to exclude people they think aren't good enough. I've gotten kicked out of perfectly secular places before (an apartment and a job, specifically, though not simultaneously).

I was raised in a church too where my mum thought my problems were demonic possession. I got hands laid on me and prayed for to get the demon of depression out of me.
Being a moody 13 year old autistic teenager was also demonic possession as well.

I won't go back to a church because I don't know how they'll take to me being autistic. Pray the demon out of me again? Although one of the people from my mum's church knows a family with an autistic son and he seems to be caring. I'm still not going back. I am, how I like to describe, an evolutionist.

I'm not sure if my mum's religion kept her from getting me diagnosed. She rarely took me to doctors unless I was really physically ill. She took me to a church therapist once though.
She at least knows that I am autistic but she thinks I can still magically do things like be social. Maybe I need more hand laid on me?
I'm pretty sure I'm going to hell now for writing that.

It was never really open - not an open family. I knew my sister had serious problems, one brother had issues and the other was in his first days suspect. At least one sister knew I had problems - which I never knew.

The serious sister was counselled and eventually briefly institutionalized wghich scare the living daylights out of her. as far as I know nobody else got any intevention though I was apparently evaluated.

"You better get over it if you know what's good for you!"

"What are you talking about? You're normal!"

"You just need a swift kick in the a**!"

"What's the matter with you?! Can't you understand plain English?!?!"

"How are you going to find a girl if you keep acting that way?"

I better stop there.

Every time I mention something to my mother about something I have

"That sounds just like me."

NO IT f*****g DOESN'T!! !! !

She basically sees everything I have as just a crutch. She's one of those annoying "tough it out" types. No wonder my brother was a heroin addict for x years.

Churches are pretty much stucked in the middle ages mentality (when they believed mental health problems were demoniac possessions, etc...).

I think that my parents could cope better with me after they started talking to the parents of my friends from group therapy (that also have mental health problems). They got a bit relieved (espeically my dad) after discovering that there were other parents with the same issues (living with sons with MH conditions). Also my father can´t complain too much about me because he has ADHD and many aspie traits also. Also I believe that they don´t have a negative view of me because I´m very responsible and they are not.

I know that's difficult dealing with a loved one who refuses and/or just cannot understand what its like to be you.

My pain specialist is rough around the edges too. I told her at my last appointment that she would make a great military drill/training instructor. She acted like she didn't care for my comment at all. What can I say, its true. I have trouble with telling people what they don't want to hear.

I believe one of the most important things we long for in life is "to be understood".

They believe they exhist but that most physiatrists are goofier than their paitents. My brother is an ER doctor and says every physiatrist he has encontered is "wacky". Phycologists aren't any better. They are either unsympathic b*****s or cluless hippies that have obviously cheated in college. Good phycologsts and physitrists are rarer than rocking horse poop they say.