Welcome to From Insults to Respect. 

Those who experience what is sometimes referred to as a nervous breakdown can receive a great many insults as their behavior begins to annoy. The Rolling Stones’s hit “19th Nervous Breakdown” insightfully explores this issue.

The lyrics begin,

You’re the kind of person you meet at certain dismal, dull affairs
Center of a crowd, talking much too loud, running up and down the stairs
Well, it seems to me that you have seen too much in too few years
And though you’ve tried you just can’t hide your eyes are edged with tears

You better stop, look around
Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown

The song tells us about someone who frequently, nineteen times so far, experiences what the vocalist, Mick Jagger, refers to as a nervous breakdown. I get the sense the “talking way too loud” is annoying. Mick hazards a guess in this first stanza as to what’s causing these breakdowns–seeing too much in too few years. The character in this tale is overwhelmed.

Mick, in the next verse, provides some additional theorizing.

When you were a child you were treated kind but you were never brought up right
You were always spoiled with a thousand toys but still you cried all night
Your mother who neglected you owes a million dollars tax
And your father’s still perfecting ways of making sealing wax

Early childhood experiences, such as being spoiled, a lack of motherly attention, and family financial difficulties can be significant stresses leading to a variety of emotional concerns. Supporting this line of thinking is an abundance of research evidence (see HERE, HERE, and HERE). 

Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry, along with psychiatrists who sold out to it, promotes the theory that these emotional concerns are due to a chemical imbalance. The right pill prescription, they claim, is the first line of treatment.

Because doctors in the physical health arena have become so respected because of many amazingly successful treatments dealing with physical health problems, doctors in the mental health arena find it easy to convince their patients to take a variety of pills. This financially rewording model continues despite years of negative research findings (see HERE). Hans S. Schroder, clinician and researcher at the Harvard Department of Psychiatry along with his colleagues, recently wrote:

Oh, who’s to blame
That girl’s just insane
Well, nothing I do don’t seem to work
It only seems to make the matters worse
Oh, please

You were still in school when you had that fool who really messed your mind
And after that you turned your back on treating people kind
On our first trip I tried so hard to rearrange your mind
But after awhile I realized you were disarranging mine

It’s understandable how people can lose their patience with someone viewed as insane. That’s one of the reasons some people are super quick to encourage the quick fix of psychiatric drugs. However, in another hit by the Rolling Stones, “Mother’s Little Helper,” Mick doesn’t seem too comfortable with this. The song’s lyrics deal with the popularity of prescribed drugs and the potential hazards of overdose or addiction. The early part of the song tells us,

What a drag it is getting old,

“Kids are different today”
I hear every mother say
Mother needs something today
To calm her down
And though she’s not really ill
There’s a little yellow pill

She goes running for the shelter
Of her mother’s little helper
And it helps her on her way
Gets her through her busy day

We are indeed getting older, and having anxiety about this is a common useful experience, not an illness. Anxiety, when handled skillfully, motivates us to come to mature understandings about how we can live a life worth living (see HERE for a fuller understanding regarding the nature of anxiety). But when a mother goes to a doctor and expresses concerns about her anxiety, there’s an excellent chance she will have her expressed concerns translated into mental disorder language and she will leave the office with a drug prescription. That’s how the doctors make their money. How does this sit with Mick?

“Things are different today”
I hear every mother say
Cooking fresh food for her husband’s just a drag
So she buys an instant cake
And she burns a frozen steak

And goes running for the shelter
Of her mother’s little helper
And two help her on her way
Get her through her busy day 

“Doctor, please
Some more of these”
Outside the door
She took four more
What a drag it is getting old

Life has its periods of frustration. If you were brought up in a home where feeling down was viewed as something is wrong with you, it’s easy to move from that view to pathologizing such experiences. The pharmaceutical industry promotes this way of thinking with ads that depict someone feeling down, and then, following a prescription for a pill, the sun is now shining, and everyone is all smiles. There is a serious downside that comes with this approach, as the song’s next lines begin to bring into focus.

“Men just aren’t the same today”
I hear every mother say
“They just don’t appreciate that you get tired”
They’re so hard to satisfy
You can tranquilize your mind

So go running for the shelter
Of a mother’s little helper
And four help you through the night
Help to minimize your plight

“Doctor, please
Some more of these”
Outside the door
She took four more
What a drag it is getting old

Notice that two pills are no longer sufficient for these mothers. The process of addiction is underway. In the scientific literature, this process is called “down regulation” or “tolerance.” To understand this process, let’s take the example of tobacco smokers. We see evidence of tolerance to tobacco in studies that indicate fewer responses than do non-smokers to the same amount of nicotine (Perkins et al. 2001b). More specifically, we see a reduction on measures of subjective stimulation that may be viewed as pleasurable, such as arousal, vigor, and a subjective experience often referred to as “head rush” or “buzz.”

“Life’s just much too hard today”
I hear every mother say
The pursuit of happiness
Just seems a bore
And if you take more of those
You will get an overdose

No more running for the shelter
Of a mother’s little helper
They just helped you on your way
Through your busy, dying day

There are a variety of skillful ways to deal in a healthy manner with anxiety and its sister experiences, depression and melancholy. There are ways to make friends with these experiences.

Meditating once or twice a day provides an opportunity to spend time addressing concerns with little distractions. Although as we enter into meditation, we don’t do so with the intent to address concerns, they naturally bubble up from the relatively peaceful state, and our minds spend time working through our various concerns in a natural healthy manner before we become overwhelmed. Taking a walk, particularly in a place filled with nature, journal writing about concerns, and speaking to a counselor are other healthy examples.

AnxietyInsanitymental healthPsychiatric DrugsThe Rolling Stone