Addiction is a disease?

[noggindoc]

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Greetings,

Thank you for the replies to my perspective on labels of 'mental illness' and 'addictive diseases.' First of all, let me respond to a poster who replied:

"Yes, crazy people are just stubborn. Do you really believe this crap? Here's a question for you - why do you think people make those bad decisions?"


The poster starts off with a personal attack, completely irrelevant to the truth value of my premises. Whether or not my idea seems counterintuitive, unexpected, socially unacceptable, incredible, silly, contrary to popular opinion does not matter. Ironically, he/she professes that people afflicted with 'mental illness' or 'addictive illness' have real diseases then he refers to them as 'crazy?' I wouldn't call somebody with cancer or diabetes 'bizarre or zany.' I wonder why he would chose this socially stigmatizing description for helpless victims of "true diseases."

Ok, now you ask me why people make bad decisions. First of all, what you consider 'bad' will hinge on your value system as to what constitutes 'bad.' Lets assume 'bad' means resulting in undesireable consequences. Here is my basic answer. People make bad decisions because people are inherently flawed creatures prone to doing stupid things. More specificially, people's behaviors are a function of their beliefs about things. For example, lets assume I believe that I must have the approval of everybody I meet. Let assume you indicate you don't approve of me and my goofy ideas regarding "mental illness." What is the likely result? I will likely have a negative cognitive-emotive consequence in light of my belief about needing universal approval.

You see, I believe people and things do not disturb us; rather we disturb ourselves by believing they CAN disturb us. I belief we needlessly disturb ourselves (often in very severe ways) by allowing inflexible and irrational ideologies to guide our thinking. You are not depressed because you lost your job; you are depressed because you believe losing your job is all-important.

"And another question - have you ever known a person with a serious mental illness? I mean severe psychotic/anxiety/dissociative disorders, OCD and schizophrenia and the like. And have you ever been close to someone with a relatively "minor" mental illness?

I'll be the first to admit the line can be hard to draw, and the DSM is a rather poor piece of work. I also think treatment recommendations have a tendency to be drug-heavy and questionable. But no such thing as mental illness? That's absurd."




BTW, I will risk subjecting myself to the psychoanalytic fallacy and confess I have been diagnosed with a 'mental illness.' Specifically, panic disorder, OCD, Aspergar's disorder and bipolar disorder. In my early twenties I was involuntarily committed and have met hundreds of people with both brain diseases and problems in living.

I used to buy into the medical model of mental illness and felt like a hopeless victim of brain chemistry disequilibrium. It was very empowering when I stumbled upon Rational Emotive Behavioral Psychology. REBT enabled me to appreciate the role my goofy and rigid ideologies played in perpetuating my own self-defeating behaviors and irrational ideas (which many call 'mental illness').

I personally think labels of mental illness are not helpful for most people. Many people become the personification of their 'disease' and capitulate, assuming a victim role. Also, labels of mental illness are stigmatizing and hurt people in terms of employment, education, social advancement, and consitutional rights. Generally, I don't think people are served well by these labels.

I never stated that I believed brain disease didn't exist. Now that would be a difficult position to defend. To reiterate, I don't believe 'mental illness' literally exists. To say a mind is all is analogous to saying society is disease; an abuse of language. The mind a hypothetical construct, a concoction, an invention, a means of explanation. True disease like diabetes has a concrete referant.

JeffreyREBT 'Wherein I don't promise to make you rich without trying; or even trying very hard; I do promise to say things that will make you feel rich."

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Jeffrey,
I'm happy that cognitive behavioral ideas and techniques have been helpful to you. It sounds like many of the principles have helped you to overcome a few rather significant mental disorders (or whatever we'd like to call them I don't want to get into the semantics debate right now). Obviously one characterstic of both Asperger's and OCD is rigidity. And it sounds like REBT has helped elucidate some of the rigidity in your thinking. But I think if you'll use what you've learned you will see that your thinking continues to be rigid in some areas. Interesting that someone with two diagnoses that tend to involve rigid and overly concrete thinking would say that he doesn't "believe" in mental illness because it has no solid or observable referent like diabetes. You sound like an infomercial for REBT. It has been shown to be effective, no doubt. There is solid research backing for this approach. However, meta-analytic studies have shown many forms of therapy to be effective. REBT is not the only effective way to do therapy (I know you didn't say that specifically don't worry).

It also sounds like the issue of "labels" for mental disorders brings up personal issues for you because you were diagnosed with several. Again, I ask you to try to see that these labels are helpful in certain situations. I agree, they can sometimes be damaging. But they were created for reasons and many of them are helpful. The field of psychology and psychiatry would be crippled without the use of these "labels." Clinical research for both therapy and medication would be nearly impossible without labels or diagnoses. This in and of itself is a strong argument for the need for diagnoses as even the treatment you advocate so much for (REBT) would not exist without it. I could go on but this is already too long winded.