I don't think anyone in this thread is ill.
Stuff....
I am trying to find a way to put this without coming off as a complete dick because my overall intent would be to try to inform rather than insult, but I know this is a tricky subject matter for a number of people for a variety of reasons. I will grant you and NGT that our society is falling prey to the advertising campaigns of large pharmaceutical companies and we have way too many people who are over medicated for issues that shouldn't be a concern when weighed against the possible side effects of prolonged drug usage. I, for one, really think these prime time tv ads for paxil and cymbalta et al need to be regulated right off the air to combat some of this, but there are those of us in this thread that aren't talking about depression and meaning we had a bad day because we got laid off or that the love of our lives left us in high school and we didn't get over it all summer. There are some people who really do suffer daily from these issues and its ignorant to just dismiss that. If you have never seen real mental illness first hand I applaud you and hope you never do, but your lack of personal experience with it doesn't mean it simply doesn't exist.
I have read all these posts as well as the ones in the previous thread (the one about people hording) and I can see real anguish in a few of them. Its fairly easy to spot, if you are observant, which people have some hang ups that a small bit of psychological coaching can get them beyond and who needs years of therapy and perhaps some stabilizing drugs to help them cope in the short term while the therapy does its work.
I can't attest to ADD since I only know as much as you do about it, but OCD isn't just about keeping the house straight and organized. That is just the most commonly shown aspect of the issue on TV since it is the most obvious one. There are all sorts of OCD symptoms such as making elaborate lists that don't matter, washing hands excessively, hording garbage on your property, but the real issue is control. A number of people have mild forms of OCD and it makes them very good book keepers, librarians, scientists and whatnot, but many other sufferers feel very unstable due to a phobia or the deep hopelessness brought on by severe chronic depression.
Those people tend to head down a slippery slope of obsessions involving smaller, less significant portions of their lives in order to feel some form of control. These obsessions trigger a response that lessens anxiety and thus promotes them over time to being compulsive behavior. At this point no longer is washing your hands something you should do to feel better, its something you HAVE to do not to feel worse. Lets take someone who is woefully afraid of germs. They obsess on cleanliness in order to avoid as many bacteria as possible and that makes them feel less fragile. The longer they perform these rituals and don't get sick the more positive reinforcement they get. This obsession may start as making sure the house is always spotless, never shaking hands with anyone and washing their hands at specific times every day. So far, we have someone who is a tad weird, but still ok overall in society.
The problem is that all of these little rituals continue to build upon themselves over time eventually becoming overwhelming compulsions and they tend to grow in number or complexity. At a certain point there are so many of these intricate little rituals to do that you could just as easily have partially screwed one up and the anxiety that is caused when you even think you made a mistake performing one of these compulsions forces you to redo it and make extra sure its done perfectly this time. This is how you get people who wash their hands until the skin starts to slough off. People like this focus so much energy and attention to these rituals that they are left drained and again hopeless, but the alternative at this stage is the absolute dread that without fulfilling the compulsion the entire world will fall around you.
Now, before you simply state, but that is all in that person's head and they *could just stop the ritual and nothing will happen, remember this person is already subjected to horrible fight or flight level panic when something goes wrong in these rituals; the type a healthy person reserves for when they are being car jacked at gunpoint. These aren't simply misunderstood individuals and they can't be cured by someone just telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and carry on. It takes years of therapy sometimes to trace back what the root of the issues are and how to reprogram the brain to accept a life without the compulsions and in the mean time there are drugs that make you less anxiety riddled. I can tell you that I have been put in a position where I have nearly died a couple of times and the feeling of dread from those events are of the same level I go through when I get one of my anxiety attacks that happen at least a couple times a week. If this doesn't help explain these issues a little I am at a loss. Perhaps someone with formal training in pyschology can shed more light on the issue.
