I was challenged by an online video by Luke Chao.
In it he discussed the terms mental illness and mental injury.
He spoke about the way we perceive accidents involving physical injury compared to accidents that involve mental impacts.
A PHYSICAL INJURY
He gave a scenario where you are walking down the street and someone runs up to you and slashes your arm. You are hurt and bleeding but you are not sick. Apart from the injury to your arm you are otherwise healthy. No one blames you for being slashed. After all, that is victim blaming, something we are increasingly aware of and seek to avoid doing.
COMPARE THIS TO A MENTAL INJURY
But someone who is suffering from a mental injury is not given the same respect. If you developed PTSD as a result of this random attack you would be described as being mentally ill. This implies that there is something wrong with you, rather than there being something wrong with the people around you or your environment. In the case of the slashed arm, something is wrong with the person who randomly decided to slash your arm.
Suddenly you are being victim blamed. But isn’t that something we try to avoid doing these days?
PHYSICAL INJURIES BUT MENTAL ILLNESS
If you have arthritis in your knee but are otherwise healthy, you just have arthritis in your knee.
If you have anxiety about social situations but are otherwise healthy, you are mentally ill.
Using the term mentally ill suggests there is something wrong with you as a person. The connotation drawn from that term is that you have something wrong with you and you are ill.
Why is there such a difference between physical ailments and psychological ailments?
WHAT COUNSELLOR’S STUDY IN THEIR BACHELOR DEGREES
Luke’s comments reminded me of the rationale behind the subjects I studied in my counselling degree. We not only studied counselling, but also psychology (to better understand behaviour) and sociology (to better understand the environment). We were always taught that we needed to understand the context of a person’s environment and the impact of the people around them to understand what was happening to them.
A HORRIBLE WAY FOR YOU TO BE TREATED
If you walk into my practice room and I just see you as mentally ill, then that implies I just see you as being wrong, at fault.
If I see you as being the cause of your suffering then I don’t look further than you. I pathologise your suffering. I look for dysfunction in you and set out to correct it.
THE WAY I TREAT YOU
But that is not what I do.
Instead, I see your suffering as the result of an injury that has resulted in a completely normal reaction to abnormal circumstances. Sometimes there is more than one injury. Sometimes the injury keeps happening again and again, or has in the past happened again and again.
I look at your environment, including the people in that environment. I look to see how that impacts on you and your suffering.
I believe every person who walks through my door is someone who has been injured as a result of abnormal circumstances. I see you as being a healthy individual who is coping as best you can with a wound.
Interestingly the Greek word for wound is trauma.
Makes sense doesn’t it.
NEED HELP WITH YOUR MENTAL INJURY?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your mental injury, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
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