Can Mental Illness Be An Escape From Responsibility?
Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today we take a close look at one reason some folks have a low level of respect for people who are viewed as having a mental illness–the belief that such people are avoiding responsibilities.
There are two other main reasons for the stigma associated with being labelled mentally ill that we won’t dive into today, but I’ll just briefly mention. 
One has to do with the fact that some people at a gut level look down upon anyone who acts a little different than the norm. The other is the belief that people labelled mentally ill are prone to be violent. In actuality, the vast number of these people are not any more violent than the average Joe or Jill (see HERE for a review of the research). The misperception about this type of violence is fed by a media that has learned it has an increased viewership whenever it provides stories of particularly gruesome killings by people presumed to be mentally ill.
So, recognizing that acting differently and perceptions about an increased risk of violence are significant reasons for the stigmatizing of those labelled mentally ill, let’s now put them aside, so we can more thoroughly focus on the responsibility issue.
An Early Incident Of Someone Bringing Up The Responsibility Issue
William James
William James, during his youth, and well before his amazing career as a psychologist and philosopher, experienced what he viewed as a mental disorder. He initially felt it was hopeless to do anything about it because he believed all mental disorders are completely due to some biological defect. Then, after coming upon some ideas that suggested will and effort can be helpful, James changed his mind, and managed to overcome his turmoil by taking on the responsibility of actively making some significant changes in his life.
Shortly afterwards, James discovered that despite his own success in reacting positively to suggestions about taking some responsibility for handling one’s psychological concerns, other people responded dramatically different. We vividly see this in an 1865 letter that James wrote to his younger brother, Henry, that reads in part:
To suggest personal will and effort to one “all sicklied o’er” with the sense of weakness, of helpless failure, and of fear, is to suggest the most horrible of things to him. What he craves is to be consoled in his very impotence, to feel the Powers of the Universe recognize and secure him, all passive and failing as he is.
Many years have gone by since James wrote that letter, and yet I have found it just as relevant in our own time. In recent years I have become acquainted with many who become angry at any suggestion regarding the value of seeking within, and to be open from others, for suggestions on how they may actively deal with these types of concerns. Rather, they choose to passively respond to what they view as a mental illness, while insisting that something like the “Powers of the Universe” is the only thing that could secure them. Although “The Powers of the Universe” sometimes is viewed by them as some religious figure, more and more in today’s world, filling this role are often psychiatrists prescribing drugs.
Another Situation In Which People Bring Up the Responsibility Issue
Approximately 2 million individuals classified as having a mental illness manage to receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Some find this infuriating. I have personally heard many folks make remarks such as, “These recipients should go to work like the rest of us, damn it!”
This attitude is a simplification of a very complicated issue and causes, in my opinion, far more harm than good. Although there is little doubt that there are some SSDI recipients out in our society who are deliberately scamming taxpayers, others are not. Unless those criticizing the SSDI recipients have some specific suggestion on how to identify the cheaters, then the criticism unfairly tarnishes the respect of many who are doing the best they can under deeply trying circumstances.
The only reasonable proposal that I have heard to address this type of attack on responsibility is “Universal Basic Income” (see HERE). Under this proposal, everyone would get a check from the federal government that is sufficient to meet a person’s basic needs, and without a work requirement. Thus, it eliminates the giant, costly bureaucracies that run social security, unemployment benefits, and SSDI. Moreover, everyone gets these checks, so it can ameliorate the resentment that comes from thoughts that there are folks scamming the SSDI system
And Yet Another Situation In Which People Bring Up the Responsibility Issue
Anxiety is typically experienced as a type of fear about something that might occur in the future. Grief is a feeling of sadness about a loss of something or someone we value.
In our society, many folks are taught, and come to accept, the idea that experiencing fear or sadness are signs of weakness and cowardliness. This leads to feelings of guilt whenever such experiences arise. All of this occur despite the fact that pretty much all of us regularly experience anxiety and grief, including folks who act in the most courageous manner. Moreover, anxiety and grief experiences are actually enormously helpful, for they are an essential part of the process that helps us to avoid or minimize danger and to figure out how to best move forward after a significant loss.
Now many people think that feeling guilty can provoke people to act responsibly. Confusion abounds on this point. There are indeed instances in which people report that upon feeling guilty about something, it did lead to making a useful change. But, when they say this, often they are confusing feeling guilty with experiencing a sense of responsibility.
People who feel guilty typically seek to punish themselves by either throwing insults at themselves, or actually physically hurting themselves. In contrast, taking responsibility for one’s anxiety and grief, in my opinion, involves welcoming these two experiences, kind of like you might a friend, for these experiences enrich our lives if handled responsibly. If you have something more pressing to take care of for a short period of time, it can make sense to gently delay your interaction with whatever anxiety and grief you have to deal with until a more convenient time. However, the responsible thing to do is to soon invite these experiences back so you can spend some time to work through these types of concerns. Daily meditation, quiet walks, and journal writing, are ideal ways to do this.
During these times of responsibly working through experiences of anxiety and grief, you recognize you have an important job to do. This job involves allowing yourself to fully experience the physical sensations that come, not as something awful, but as something useful and containing even some aspects of great beauty. It is like listening in a caring way to a good friend who is going through an anxiety or grief experience, and empathizing on a physical level with what he or she is experiencing. This experiencing leads naturally to seeking ways to address the concerns that bring about anxiety and grief.
Even if no immediate promising ideas come from a particular episode of spending time in this way, taking responsibility involves keeping hope alive. This means that you recognize that with particularly challenging situations, it takes an extended time to fully address such concerns. In the coming days, new, fresh ideas may yet come your way, or the situations that brought about the concerns may change in unexpected ways to your advantage. In contrast to acting responsibly, experiencing guilt when feeling anxious or grief becomes an aversive experience, and one way to avoid such negative experiences is by finding or creating distractions.
These distractions, when used too often are far from ideal. It is analogous to sleep. When people try to distract themselves from their sleepiness for too long, say by watching exciting TV shows, their sleepiness becomes stronger and stronger and more and more intense. If they continue to press on, avoiding getting enough sleep with various distractions, their functioning becomes compromised. A similar process happens when we keep avoiding providing sufficient time to work through our anxiety and grief concerns.
This deterioration of functioning can be observed with a variety of experiences that get labelled as mental illnesses. For example, John Neale, working out of the State University of New York, presents a fairly good case that people who are vulnerable to manic episodes are actively avoiding their fears and grief. According to Neale’s account, when events lead to increasing perceptions of anxiety and fear, mania is triggered either by the experience of the perceived negative mood, or perhaps the threat of negative mood.
Thus, mania may, in some cases, be a way to avoid responding responsibly to anxiety and grief because of the guilt that occurs over misunderstanding the nature of these useful experiences. This misunderstanding, along with not knowing how to respond responsibly when these experiences occur, may lead to reaching a point at which the person becomes overwhelmed by unprocessed concerns. It is at this point that creating grandiose ideas manage to further distract these folks from the distressing thoughts spinning out of control. It has been estimated that 47 per cent of people who experience what mental health professionals often refer to as psychotic delusions during their manic phase claim they have grandiose abilities. This often leads to friends, family, and community members, concluding such folks are behaving irresponsibly.Conclusion
We have just surveyed the three main reasons people may come to believe someone labelled as having a mental illness is escaping responsibility. First discussed was the belief that some labelled people, rather than taking responsibility for their experience, prefer to be consoled because of what they have come to believe is their impotence to deal constructively with their sense of weakness, helpless failure, and fear. We then discussed people who resent mentally ill labelled folks collecting SSDI benefits, believing they are irresponsibly scamming the system. And finally, we looked at the theory that some mentally ill labelled people have not learned how to responsibly deal with the experiences of anxiety and grief, instead feel guilty when they have such experiences, and consequently seek to avoid these feeling with the use of various distractions.
Now, having surveyed these main reasons, some may therefore jump to the conclusion that people labelled as mentally ill should be blamed for not acting responsibly. Blame, in my estimation, is typically counterproductive. Too often, it will provoke horror, total rejection of the blamer, and a hardening of whatever position the person who is being blamed holds.
Permit me to suggest an alternative. First, assess whether or not the person is capable, for a period of time, or even over a course of a lifetime, to process any suggestions from anyone. If not, blaming is not going to help. Just showing a little kindness from time to time, I think, is the best approach, and for lifting your own sense of being a person worthy of respect.
What about those people whom you assess as capable of making some meaningful changes? Perhaps most helpful is telling them a story from time to time about individuals who have learned the difference between guilt and responsibility when dealing with their anxiety and grief. The story would then go on to illustrate how this person, when practicing responsible behavior, discovered dramatic benefits. After telling the story, ask for their reaction, and then listen in an empathetic manner to what they have to say. Although you might be tempted to make counterarguments to what is being said, often it is better to stick to just listening in a caring manner.
My posts on Abraham Lincoln, Leo Tolstoy, and Joni Mitchell can be helpful in setting you along this path (see HERE, HERE, and HERE). 
For a more in-depth story of this kind, I recommend my novel, Fights In The Streets, Tears In The Sand (see HERE). It provides a heart warming tale of a young boy who has a particularly difficult time wrestling with his anxiety and grief. When his mother is pressured by a psychiatrist to have him involuntarily treated with psychiatric drugs known to have a number of severe side effects, family and friends fight in court to be permitted to seek an alternative, more humanistic approach.
Well, there you have it, a few of my ideas on this very challenging topic. I hope it provides some useful ideas.
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
People told me I should be willing to take responsibility for my actions. To me that’s vanilla teaching. This willingness can take a hike as far as I’m concerned. Instead, I demand responsibility for anything I did, do, and will do in the future. All my actions are based on my choices. I know, when a judge would sentence me to 20 years in prison, that wouldn’t be my choice. But the action that led to my imprisonment was.
That was one. Here’s number two. Feeling guilty is alien to me. Why is that? Mainly because I’m not a religious person, and certainly not one going with the idea that “we all are sinners”. Some people looked at me in disbelief and then condemned me the time I told them that I’m not a sinner. Next to that, I’ve never claimed to be a victim, or felt like one. Anxiety? Not really. There were times I was afraid or scared, but not in a way like anxiety is defined.
In comes grief. For sure I know that one. Since my Lady died, I’m lost, frozen, inactive, walking through life as if an anvil is resting on my chest, and only do the routine stuff I already did when she still was alive. But I do not “seek to avoid these feeling with the use of various distractions.” Neither do I care when people blame me for the way I deal with her death.
You reject the usual approaches (as do I), and instead offer alternatives. None of them appealed to me. Why? Maybe because I don’t think I belong to any of the people you described. I just can’t properly (or was that responsibly?) live with the idea that she’s not around anymore, while knowing perfectly well that I have no choice in the matter. No matter what I do, it’s over and done, and I can never bring her back.
Just the other day I posted a picture on my Facebook page, including the following words: “The irony of grief is that the person that you need to talk about how you feel is the person who is no longer here.” That says it all in my view.
A woman who lost her adult child eight years ago told me: “My life has lost its luster.” I understood instantly. I don’t think she and I, even if we would have been “practicing responsible behavior” as you call it, would have “discovered dramatic benefits” from it.
Always a pleasure to hear from you.
Apparently you found little value in my latest post, in part, because you already “demand” responsibility for anything you did, do, and will do. I think this is wise. I know many people who don’t, or confuse this idea with guilting themselves, and it is those people I hoped to reach.
You move on in your comment to make some subtle point about not experiencing guilt, nor do you view yourself as a sinner, religious, or anxious. I appreciate your views on this, but my mind was most drawn to your experience with grief and the lost of your lady. Having lost my father when I was 11, and then my mother when I was quite a bit older, losing someone so dear is certainly something I can relate to.
You expressed that what I wrote in my post has not benefited you. If you mean by this, that your continued sense of extreme lost has not gone away, I too have not benefitted in that way from what I have written. That said, I do think that there are people who are handling such loses in ways that they have found unsatisfactory, and although the alternative that I discussed in my post is not designed to alleviate all sense of loss, I do conjecture it might have something to offer some people.
In sympathy,
Jeff
❤️