Before answering this question I should give the reader some background on why I’m choosing to write about this topic at all. Five years ago I developed paranoid Schizophrenia, a severe mental illness that affects your perception and involves delusions about reality. It is quite a horrible illness and took about two years before receiving treatment and caused significant trauma to me and obviously deeply affected my family. Before my illness, which developed quickly, I have suffered with suicidal thoughts and depression as a teenager, and as an adult childbirth trauma, post-partum depression, and chronic anxiety. All the “minor” mental health difficulties went untreated and I only recognize them in retrospect.
I am very fortunate that in my recovery time my husband’s family took our children in for a few months while I was treated in the hospital. We are enormously lucky and privileged to have loved ones take care of them at such a critical time. Also, my family, and specifically my aunt have talked to me for hours upon hours working through trauma and anxiety attacks dealing with the fallout of this horrible disease. I am very blessed.
That said, despite all the efforts to de-stigmatize mental illness, I am very alone socially in dealing with it. Most people we have known for years and know I was hospitalized don’t ever address it or ask how I’m doing. Socially I know I can’t discuss my difficulties or they would be met with discomfort and silence. One time I found it necessary to reveal my illness to someone whose communication was upsetting to me after I had just emerged from a six month psychosis due to medication changes. I was told that “God didn’t want me to take the easy way.” While this response seems cruel and even ridiculous given the severity of the disease “everyday” mental illnesses are met with similar callousness. Post-partum depression or any kind of depression are written off as ingratitude, suicidal thoughts or acting on it are “looking for attention”, people with OCD just “need to relax”, people grieving the death of a loved one “need to move on”. The list and terrible responses go on and on.
Is there a reason for why conservatives struggle with these issues? David Shariatmadari makes the argument in the article Why Can’t Conservatives Fix Mental Health? that they struggle because “mental health conditions primarily affect our thoughts and behaviour, faculties that we are taught to view as being under our conscious control.” Also, “The once widespread view that mental illness comes about through weakness of character lingers on today.” Conservatives believe in hard work and self-control, which are admiral qualities. However, many mental issues previously seen as personality defects are now known to be chemical and biological, not a matter of willpower.
Of course, negative, rude beliefs and reactions to mental issues are I’m sure endemic to both sides of the political realm and difficulties with conservatives dealing with mental problems are only in conflict with one aspect of conservative ideology. Traditional Christian religion has always believed in being caring and welcoming to those disadvantaged in any way. It shouldn’t be that hard for conservatives to learn to extend this charity to those with mental health issues and they are going to need to learn to do so. The liberals are pushing this cause hard and those who would otherwise stay and fight will feel too lonely and leave – and it will be for good reason.
I am hoping that other souls who struggle with any form of mental health concerns will feel a little less lonely in stumbling across this blog. I am not in any way a health professional and I have no answers, but there must be a place for those who believe in tradition, religion, beauty, and family to feel that they belong and it is worth staying and fighting. That they are not alone.
Conservatives for Mental Care - A Cultural Catharsis 