More “Mental Illness” Statistics Jokes
filed in Mental Health Statistics on Nov.07, 2008
Just ran across this wonderful statistic from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health: “An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.”
!?!?!
Mental illness statistics such as these have been leapfrogging over each other for years like some kind of high tech market/subprime mortgage investment bubble for pseudoscience. It happens easily when psychiatric diagnosing is becoming the modern version of the horoscope, but look at what is seriously being suggested here: At any given time 1/4 of our entire population is mentally ill! And assuming at least some of those people, from year to year, “get better” or “go into remission” or something, then easily, the NIMH is implying that well over half, probably 3/4ths or closer to 100% of the population becomes mentally ill at some point in their lifetimes!
When those are the numbers, there’s really no alternative but to concede that we have essentially re-defined normalcy as mental disorder. Well then, if that’s the case, why isn’t NIMH concommitantly advocating radical social revolution?
November 8th, 2008 on 7:53 am
This is certainly a barometer of what this society is doing to the individual and collective human soul. Truth be known, within this societal construct, very few escape entirely unscarred.
What needs to happen is for this to be recognized as a social justice issue, not a medical one – and the necessary corrective action taken at the societal level.