Is it becoming more prevalent?

Mrs Dally is going to go to counselling (again)
Miss Dally 1 used to have alot of input from child pyscotherapy
Miss Dally 2 has had a bit of counselling and has OCD
The vet even suggested the cat have a behavioual expert to assess her
My business partner is seeing a shrink.

Mrs Dally has posited I am the common link. Could this be the case, rather than a more general increase?

You're the common link in an increase in the nations instances of poor mental health?

Could be.

Personally I believe that you are responsible for your own mental health, accepting that some conditions are very difficult to overcome and indeed may be insurmountable.

Most amazing opening post ever.



But is he serious?!!

The mind boggles...

That might be the case in general wellbeing terms i.e feeling 'happy,' 'satisfied' or 'stressed' for example, but having worked in and around mental health for a number of years, your second point is an important one; it certainly isn't the case when you're dealing with some of the serious mental health problems, which can occur without warning and be absolutely devastating to individuals and the people around them.

The opening post is uncomfortably revelatory - that aside, if it was a genuine question, there's some useful information [url=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/neilobrien1/100186974/the-remarkable-rise-of-mental-illness-in-britain/here.[/url

It is becoming more prevalent. YES.

I said to someone the other day, we weren't designed to handle the stresses that we experience in this day and age. Apart from the terrible stress of war all we're meant to do is hunt, forage and reproduce. Even with death we were far more used to seeing things being slaughtered as people would kiil their own animals or view others being butchered. Now we are more sanitised in western cultures as that gets done elsewhere.

To Dally, it sounds like there has been issues with anxiety if wifey, Miss D 1 and 2 have counselling and OCD is a more extreme form of anxiety. Go and do a genogram of your family and see if there's. If could be a nurtured reason for their anxiety. It really is none of our businesses, but think about it. Also if you were in the old bill. You would have had a far greater amount of stress to handle than is normal. So you cold have issues with anxiety that the family pick up on.

More prevalent, or just easier to report on ?

We're now two generations on from the last generation that was REALLY affected by war in this country, of course that doesn't minimise those serving in the Armed Forces, but for the rest of us conflict and the trauma that comes with it is something that is viewed purely on TV, we certainly don't still build air raid shelters in our gardens and spend most nights awake in our beds waiting for sirens.

Two generations ago our families were exposed to stress that most of us can't understand, not just from conflict but from poverty, no employment protection and very patchy health care, their jobs were of a far more manual basis and far more dangerous for that.

So is the big difference the fact that that generation and all that went before would be far less likely to speak to even their partners about their anxieties let alone anyone medical, especially when the reaction from the medical world would often be to send them away for "treatment" that may be for a very long time ?

It's certainly the case that as the stigma of mental health problems has reduced, people are more likely to speak to a professional and said professional is more likely to diagnose; such that they are now the no 1 reason for absence from work, and account for more incapacity benefit (or whatever it's called now) claimants than anything else.

I do think it's important however, to distinguish between things like stress, anxiety and depression, and much more serious conditions like schizophrenia, bi-polar and the like.

Good point.

yeah, it could be very well the fact that there is less stigma and more people talk about which looks like mental illness has increased. I, personally suspect and can only talk from my own viewpoint through my readings and education as a counsellor thay it is more prevalent. I also feel there is far more stress in the world and technology has played a small part in that. Technology has made things quick, so there is an expectation that things SHOULD be done quicker. This is a large factor in the increase in stress, in my opinion.




Very true however the former can develop into the more serious conditions.

Durham Giant is the expert, and can diagnose too.

I would add more, but am quite mad, so there's no sledgehammer.

You know, when I was a kid in the 1960s it was the dawn of a new technology era with men leaving the earth to drift around in space and talk of them going to the moon any day soon - and all of this would benefit the rest of the world, our lives would be made so much simpler by machines and robots and we would have so much more leisure time to spend being happy, it was going to be wonderful life.

What they didn't say was that the use of machines and robots would actually make us all work harder, that didn't come into the equation at all, nor did the prospect that if you got rid of hard physical labouring work then the work that replaced it would be mentally challenging in a way that physical labour never was.

And yet, thats what happened.

My concern is with the [icat[/i, having to survive in a house full of loons.

If it was a dog I'd be concerned because dogs really do feel themselves to be a part of the team.

Because its a cat I'm not so conrcerned though, the cat will just sit on top of the fridge and watch all of this with complete detachment and then one day, when one of them forgets to feed him/her, will jump to the floor, walk out of the door and go find somewhere else to live, cats don't give a fook.

I think (although I could well be wrong) that we're having a classic message board miss communication in that the second half of your opening paragraph is pretty much what I meant by my second point.

I think I was probably just agreeing with your first statement [iin part[/i, whilst reiterating your second point.

We are furiously agreeing with one another!

Lots of interesting points here (and on the thread in general). I think stress is a factor – and while I do think we were not 'designed' at all but have evolved, I don't think that living in very densely populated areas is what we have (yet?) evolved to be able to comfortably and easily do.

I'd also pick up on what Jerry said: I remember meeting a very elderly man once, who had been in the war. He couldn't get over the culture of counselling and stress etc, and effectively said that people should have some 'stiff upper lip' – he was a bit more East End working class about it, though.

On the other hand, someone I knew tells the tale of their father, who went to war (just after my friend was born) and came back apparently okay, but had turned into someone who abused both his wife and son, and drank himself into an early grave. He had, apparently, been standing next to a friend when that friend's head was blown off.

If we look back at WWI, we know there were many, many cases of, in effect, stress – or shell shock as it was called, and many were often 'diagnosed' with execution, with the sufferer condemned as a coward.

I do think there are plenty of things we know more about and understand more these days, and can therefore diagnose better. Whether there are also conditions (if that's an acceptable term), such as ADD and so on that are caused or triggered or exacerbated by some very recent factors (additives in processed food, for instance) is another question. But it may be that there are many more factors involved.

There's probably a cat internet somewhere, where LoLZDally has become a big hit.

Probably?

There will DEFINITELY be a cats internet, cats will have invented the internet but not told us about it in the same arrogant way that they just walk into houses and mew loudly "I'm living here now, you must feed me at the same time every night, you must provide me with a tray to crap in, you must clean that tray frequently, and I'll lay on whatever furnishings I damn well like, now move out of my way and fetch me some nibbles".

"Oh and by the way - that dog, he'll have to go"

PTSD can be crippling. I lived here with vietnam vets who you can't have anything bar compasssion and empathy for. Not because of any political agenda or bias for war, just they state these boys came home in. And where then treated poorly by their own people.

I was personally very pleased when Professor Simon Charles Wessely got awarded in the Honours List for services to Military Healthcare and to Psychological Medicine. Amongst all the posh s with their business contacts and the twisted ear mob and the bunch that used to play sticky biscuit at Eton.

To me, it's irrelevant what 'side', for want of a better phrase, veterans come from, or whether their government was justified in sending them to war – the politicians are ultimately responsible, not the 'cannon fodder'. And I use that phrase with sympathy for those so used.

Cliché alert – but when the cannon fodder come from the sons and daughters of the politicians, then maybe wars will be reduced.

Yeah, the governments are indeed responsible for the deployment of a country's troops for military actions. And only relatively recently, do they acknowledge their reponsibility to the mental well being of troops.

You can send in 100 people into a situation of high stress. 99 of them may not be affected at that time. The next 100 sent in to the same scenario, you may get 80 not getting affected. It's so hard to know what will happen. And there will be differing levels of anxiety and stress amongst those traumatised.

On the Vietnam vets over here. In my old RSL, I used to have fascinating conversations with these blokes. One in particular, who is highly intelligent, but literally just drinks all day, every day. Often with his mates for the last 40 odd years. He always talks about his mate "porky pete" who was the rich kid in the platoon as was always the "tail end charlie". He said to me that he has no idea how that bloke spent most of his time there walking backwards. Yet if you saw this bloke, you know there's something not quite right with him. Yet he is still capable of empathy for his mate.