A very interesting and thought provoking article. One axiom about human behaviour is that you can trust self interest. Gladly accepting the sick victim role, or in sliding into it, or in being seduced into it - with the ultimate effect of limiting or hurting one's self seems to contradict the axiom. How might we help people distinguish between on the one hand, denial of a real mental health problem which condemns them to unnecessary suffering, and on the other hand grasping a more optional role that offers some immediate benefit but if institutionalised condemns the person to less than what might be? I suspect the lure of a disability pension has potential to cause a lot of damage - but I wouldn't want to deny a disabled person some help in genuine need.

I remember reading somewhere that 1 in a hundred people suffer from schizophrenia that seems like a very high number and I dont know if it was accurate or not. Thats an awful lot of mental illness.

I believe that real depression is not like ordinary sadness. It is like a sadness of the soul like the spiritual flame at the core of the person is flickering at a low ebb and in danger of going out.
Sometimes if you listen to the recent events in their lives it would be strange if they werent sad. Of course our society doesnt deal well with someone they cant give a pill to and cure quickly. Its too inconvenient and time consuming in our busy selfish lives. Hence overwhelming sadness becomes an illness to be treated quickly for the sake of society as much as the victim.

Dont judge people for their human frailities too harshly. Barriers of the mind can be just as debilitating as physical illness. But then the brain is a physical part of the body too and does not always think and function the way it should.

(I usually try not to go all personal, but,) This is a very interesting article, which I found quite relevant to myself and a number of people I know. I have known a number of people who have mental illnesses: some got help, took responsibility for their own actions, and have gone on to live productive lives, (although the black dog can still lurk in the shadows); some have sought help but refuse to take responsibility for their own actions, and now base their whole identity around being mentally ill; another, who needed help more than anyone, refused to get any, due to irrational suspicions of the psychological and psychiatric professions, and tipped over the edge.

I have received counseling over the past 2 years, to help me deal with a number of unhappy events in my past. However, (not attempting to appear smug,) despite regularly admitting to feeling "miserable," I have resisted to urge to call it "depression." When you take a look at some of the awful things that happen to people, it's no wonder they feel miserable. It did occur to me a couple of times that it would be far easier to deal with Centrelink if I just took the plunge and accepted the label.

Also,sorting out one's priorities is much better than medication- for nearly a decade i was puzzled why I couldn't hold on to a job for more than a couple of years, and why I always seemed to leave in tears. Then I figured out that I hadn't been doing what I really wanted to do. Although it's harder work and it means irregular pay, being a musician is far more satisfying than working in call-centres, warehouses, retail or hospitality.

PS

runner's a moron.

I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family, which taught that the earth was 6000 years old and that evolution was wrong. I recently had to tell my father, who, ironically, has studied and worked in the fields of maths, physics, engineering and IT, that it was useless for him to use scientific method to discuss with me why evolution is wrong, because I had failed to take anything in during school science classes: I was too busy taking a skeptical attitude towards everything I was taught, because evolution touches on every branch of science. It's only been the last few years that I have become open to the wonder that is evolution.

In a country where employment is a mere privilege of well-connected on a biological ground predominantly, making idiots from biologically-inferior fellow human beings is a very goal, task and responsibility of any responsible ruling-this-Anglo-colonial-appendix government.

And a Howard era legacy is definitely IT.