Relating to Truly Mentally Ill People(Aspies vs. NTs)

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Do you think people on the Autism Spectrum have a better ability to empathize or have a "meeting of the minds" with truly mentally ill people compared to NTs?

No.

Yes and no. On a broad sense, I can understand how hard it is to live with an issue that people can't see and therefor often don't believe, as well as the fact that people have expectations for your thoughts, actions, and deeds that you can't meet. However, their thinking is more related to NT than ours so no in that regard.

The mentaly ill, they remain an enigma, with no way in or out of their minds.

I am more understanding to others that have mental illnesses. I have a good friend who has schizophrenia, and even though I don't really understand her way of thinking and she doesn't understand my way of thinking.. we empathize with one another because we still deal with daily struggles and plenty of ignorance. So in that case, I would say yes.

That's about as true as "autism remains an enigma". Mental illness is something that happens when some normal aspect of emotion or cognition becomes extreme, or becomes impaired. Asperger's has a lot in common with what most people think of as mental illness in that it means thinking differently while at the same time looking very much like everyone around you. Autism is a way of thinking and seeing the world that's on the far end of the Bell curve--autistic traits are stronger versions of what NTs have to a small degree already. And a lot of us have experienced or are currently working through a mental illness, at a greater rate than NTs, so some of us are in both categories.

The stigma of mental illness--that it's a sort of character weakness, that it means you're not competent, that it means you are dangerous--is something that still makes the experience of mental illness something that people keep secret as a shameful thing. Aspies have a similar experience with a neurological condition. Being different like that--in the way you think--is a common experience we share with those who have mental illnesses. Many Aspies are more likely to dump the stereotypes when it comes to mental illness because autistic people deal with stereotypes too, and we all know they aren't necessarily true.

The only way an Aspie can keep his prejudice against mental illness is usually to insist something like, "Asperger's isn't a mental illness. We aren't like THEM." That means more than its literal meaning because it lets you apply the stereotypes to mental illness while still keeping them away from Asperger's.

(BTW. While it's true that Asperger's isn't a problem with emotions or psychosis, by the broadest definition, Asperger's IS a psychological diagnosis, as are depression, schizophrenia, etc., so it is in the same category as mental illness, as well as in the same category as other neurolopsychological conditions such as ADHD, Alzheimer's, TBI, and Tourette's.)

Last edited by Callista on 26 Aug 2008, 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My experiences with schizophrenics and manic depressives have been so negative and I have heard about and seen some truly horrid behaviour from the schizophrenics. I would have to say I cannot empathize very easily. I cannot stand being the target of their paranoia. I can handle manic depressives who do not express their mania through anger, yelling, screaming, etc. My mother acts bipolar ( I don't know if she has it ) and she was very tempermental during my childhood. It really scared me.

My experiences with schizophrenics and bipolars have left me afraid of them and very wary.

I'd say yes, because they both have issues with the mainstream society and how they think compared to Society.

Unusual, unpredictable behavior does scare many people. It doesn't fit into the patterns we know, so we feel anxiety that comes from not being able to predict it.

I have met quite a few people with bipolar disorder. My experiences weren't universally positive, but all in all, they weren't too much unlike my experiences with NTs--that is, some bad, some good, some neutral.

I wonder sometimes whether it might not be that those with severe mental illness are hurt more by the society around them than by their actual illnesses. Check out the comparison of schizophrenia prognosis in our country and in Third World countries, where the culture is different... Even without highly advanced medicine, having to treat with dinosaurs like Thorazine, schizophrenia in those countries tends to have a much better outcome. It seems to be because the families are involved and the person is not walled away from society, because here in the US, family involvement and acceptance also has a big association with a good prognosis.

I don't know. Maybe I am not meant to be around the severly mentally ill in this life. I guess some people have better experiences with them than I do. I feel kind of bad for being so judgmental about them. It's only because of the bad examples I've seen and I apologize to anyone who has schizophrenia on here if I offended you.

in many of those cultures there is superstition that there is no such thing as mental illness and it's a personal weakness.

Not to mention things like suicide rates, etc aren't reported heavily due to stigma surrounding it and in those places there are little to no accounting of that.

mental illness is not psychosis, slowmutant. there would be no therapy for mental disease, mental illness if it were actual psychosis. Perhaps a bit of research might help.

Merle

God killed every first born child of Egypt.

Yeah. My brother is schizophrenic. We relate. : ) And my fiance is bipolar.

God sent the flood and killed everything on the planet but Noah and his family and pairs of animals.

no. I enquired about participating in some activities run for the mentally ill a couple of years back and two professionals both shook their heads and said 'ooh I don't think that's for you. I have since been befriended by a bipolar/DID person who has been a nightmare. Just too exploitative, unpredictable and cunning, plus the ego was huge.

Some types of mental illness might be ok, I've never known a schizophrenic socially. Depressed people I can't get away from them fast enough. I'm too much of a sponge for someone else's moods.