What do you think about people who blame everything they do on some diagnosis or another?

I don’t care for it. It’s one of the reasons why I want a divorce. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “It’s not my fault, I have the disease of alcoholism.”

My parents, both high school teachers, experienced plenty of this. Many of the students in the lower-level classes had some learning disability or another and used it as an “excuse” for not doing their work. “But you don’t understand, I have ADHD, I can’t do this homework and I can’t come after school for help!”

Then of course they would be forced to pass the kids or risk being verbally assaulted by the parents.

It disgusts me. The downside to all this new medical research and development, “discovering” of new disorders, has led people to believe that they aren’t responsible for themselves. Obviously, this isn’t true for everyone. My father is an example: he grew up before anyone knew about ADD and learning disabilities, and it wasn’t until he was in his 50’s that he was diagnosed with ADHD himself. He figured out himself that he had to work harder to get good grades in school, and he worked his ass off to get into a good grad school and become a teacher. My first college roommate, similarly, had severe ADHD and took medication for it, but never abused it and was always a hard-working honors student.

It’s true that certain things are out of people’s control when they have a disease or disability. But that does not mean that you can just lay back and let the doctors, pills and people around you do all the work. That’s just plain laziness!

I guess you can tell that this is something I feel rather strongly about, the way I’m ranting… sorry!

And behave poorly, saying “that’s just the way I am”. It seems that no one wants to take responsibility for their actions. I am proud to behave properly no matter what I may think. Unfortunately what I think changes with each glass of wine so I must be careful!!! It’s sort of off topic but I also hate it when someone says, “oh, I was just drunk.” as if then it’s okay to do whatever rude thing you like.

@avvooooooo there are even some of us out there that have no mental illness and still take no responsibility. I am however in 100% agreement with you.

The flip side of this is that people who have a certain diagnosis get all of their reactions to things blamed on their diagnosis.

It is the human thing to do either way, but it is not fair or good.

Hey this is not my fault either way!! :-)

@Marina Good point. As someone who does deal with a mental disorder, it’s easy to target the disorder as the cause of my more negative habits and behaviors. Some of them are entirely because of the illness, but others are just my own personal shortcomings. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, but I do my best to take responsibility for my own actions (mostly because I have my illness under control, thus I don’t really have a valid excuse!) instead of blaming them on my mental disorder.

. . . and . . . the unacceptable behavior proves that you have the disorder . . . so all you have to do is behave badly in order to justify behaving badly.

I used to work with a girl who was always late (if she turned up at all) for her shift, would constantly break rules resulting in the whole team being punished and was even caught stealing from the till. She blamed all of this on mental health problems caused by a bad childhood. Now, despite all of these unprofessional faults she was a nice girl and so I (and others) tried to be sympathetic and cut her some slack. However, as someone who also has mental health issues to deal with but still remains proffessional in the work place (as do so many others) my sympathy started to wear thin when she constantly refused to take responsibility for her actions. I started to get angry that she was using a genuine illness (I don’t doubt for a moment that she had issues) as an excuse for being at best, slightly unproffessional on a very regular basis and at worst, a thief.

Yeah… I’ve known a few of those people, and I hate it. I went to a pretty nasty public school for a few years, and all I could hear was “Ohhh I have ADHD, so I can’t do work” or “My ADD is the reason I’m failing” or “My child has ADD, how dare you hold him/her back!! it’s not his/her fault!!”

In reality, 99% of these kids were just badly behaved, with parents who payed them no attention, fed them nothing but take away food, and put them in front of the TV 24/7. These kids had nothing wrong with them, no diseases or medical conditions… they were just lazy attention seekers who wanted a free ride, so they blamed their problems on ADD or ADHD.

I knew/know this one family that had a daughter (who is now about 23 or so) who had fallen on her head as a child. As a result, she had a learning disability. Her mom was overly protective and was always saying “No, Bethany, you can’t do that because you’ll hurt yourself.”. The girl herself was very careful and very smart and very hardworking. Her mom was always giving her easy schoolwork because she “couldn’t do” the harder stuff. I didn’t like that she was always getting held back and getting protected just because of this “learning disability” (I don’t really think it was that bad).

P.S. If you’re wondering how I know all about it since I’m 13 and this was pretty much all happening before I was born, I heard about it from my brother who was her friend or atleast knew her.

I feel uncomfortable judging someone else’s capabilities. I’m not in their head and I couldn’t judge what is ‘real’ and what is ‘fake’ due to their illness.

It just makes me feel like a hypocrite, at best. I don’t want someone else telling me that I’m not really incapacitated from my illnesses- just lazy or making excuses.

I once lived with an ADHD man who had been told by teachers, therapists and some family members that he’d never be able to work or live like a “normal” person so he did try to run this by me for awhile. Turns out he was eager and adept at learning just about anything I put to him as well as enjoying to work. He learned he had ADHD but wasn’t ruled by it.

I think there are a minority of people who suffer from certain extreme personality disorders who are not entirely responsible for everything they do. Everyone else, from slackers to serial murderers has choices.

I don’t do well when somebody hands me a bunch of excuses. What I want is for an affected person to say, “You know, I have _______(fill in the blank), but I’m dealing with it each and every time it arises in my daily life. Sorry it interefered a little! I’ll work a bit harder on taking care of that.”

On the flipside, it is EXTREMELY difficult to find a person who understands what living with a mental/physical issue is really like. They are quick to judge, often long before you’ve even had the chance to show them what you’re willing and able to do. Employers are notorious for this. Family members have no idea what depression is all about, for instance. It is beyond them why a person is “holding onto the bad” and seemingly “doesn’t want to let it go”. There are massive problems for people like that. In the end, it befalls the affected person to learn mercy, because unless a person has the issue, they will never, ever know what it’s like.

This question was originally inspired by someone on another site asking what ”-philia” (aka mental disorder) it was that he obviously had that led him to disclose excessive amounts of information on the internet. Of course it isn’t his fault, he’s got a mental disorder that causes him to do it. Sure. This got me thinking about the number of people that I have known who try and evade responsibility in various ways. IMO, this has to be the most despicable of all of them. I think that anyone who has dealt with something, be it mental or physical, that they don’t have control over is somewhat able to understand that there are some things that people genuinely don’t have control over, but abusing a diagnosis is what makes people who don’t have control over their legitimate disorders and difficulties look bad. These people are the ones who make people wonder if others are faking or are making a bigger deal out of things than they are. I’ve seen a lot of these people both in my life and in my work, but few are as ridiculious as some that I’ve seen online.

@avvooooooo That’s the thing! Regardless of the issue, unless you are incapacitated to the point where a doctor or a judge can look at you and assess that you aren’t capable of making a decision, then you still have the responsibility of behaving yourself. There no excuses that preclude taking personal responsibility. In the case you just cited, this person would best help themselves by learning from the mistakes they made, not spend hour after hour bemoaning thier “fate”. Utterly ridiculous.

I can’t disagree with your choice of the word despicable.

um…I’m a bit angry about this question so I’m going to wait for Daloon’s answer and maybe it will clarify some stuff for me
edit:...or rather some of the responses… as well…

I was raised to take responsibility for everything, even things I had no control over—like world peace and whatever. There really wasn’t anything that wasn’t my job.

It was very confusing when I was diagnosed with bipolar, and I was told that I was thinking I should kill myself because of the disease, not because I really wanted to. Or that hypersexuality was a symptom of the disease. What does that mean? Does it mean I wouldn’t do that if I weren’t sick? What does that mean? Dies it mean that brain chemistry is making me think about sex all the time?

Sometimes I figure I’m just a bad person. I mean, if I do all these things that people think are wrong, then I must be bad. I am delusional and nasty and impulsive and I hurt people. What does it mean that these things are symptoms of bipolar disorder? It still feels like me that is making all these choices. And I don’t even think the behaviors are necessarily wrong. I don’t want to hurt people, especially those I love. And yet, I keep on doing things that do hurt people I care about. Things that I know most everyone else thinks are wrong. But I don’t feel like I’m wrong or bad. So that’s when I start to think I might be a sociopath.

It’s kind of confusing whether mental illness plays a role in these choices. Or maybe it’s just my life and my attempts to be happy. Or maybe I would be happy with what I have if I weren’t mentally ill. Anyway, I don’t think I try to use my illness as an excuse for how I behave.

Having said that, it makes me really uncomfortable when other people get down on those who they believe are using their disease as an excuse not to try or something. Or to excuse bad behavior.

I guess it goes to the nature of what mental illness is, and whether we adjust our expectations for people of different capabilities, and if we do, what adjustments do we make for which deficiencies in ability?

Clearly people with disabilities are given accommodations. Mental illnesses are one of the disabilities that people can get help for. For a while, African-Americans were give accommodations via affirmative action. I’m sure there are a hundred other things that we can think of where we are willing to give accommodations. What about poverty?

The line between individual responsibility and social responsibility is a difficult one to draw, I think. We take responsibility for those deemed to have disadvantages. But not all of us agree when someone has a disadvantage for which we should make allowances and accommodations.

As @gemiwing said, we aren’t in anyone else’s heads and we can’t know what accommodation they do or don’t need. For that reason, Social Security makes people do a lot to prove they are disabled. We never know for sure.

I don’t want anyone to give me a thing other than what they feel like giving me. I don’t want to manipulate anyone into giving me something unfairly. That’s also how I treat others. I react to them as they present themselves to me.

Others, I think, like to complain and point fingers, acting as if they are totally innocent or only pointing out what should be obvious. They haven’t noticed that they are exactly the ones who are not taking responsibility when they point their fingers at everyone else. I think that is a rather imperceptive way to live a life. It creates harm, too.

My mom doesn’t like to work. She’d rather sit home watching Court TV and Home Shopping all day. (When she was a teenager, she told her sister, “I didn’t ask to be here, so you all owe me.”) So when Mom hooked up with a partner who has a genuine mental issue, Mom got herself “diagnosed” with agoraphobia, knowing that her partner couldn’t cast the first stone, so to speak. As a result, mom’s partner has to work long hours to pay the mortgage and bills and support two people, as well as all the grocery shopping, errands, picking up dinner, etc. Mom… gets to sit on the couch, watching TV. She doesn’t even cook or clean or do anything else that one could expect a stay-at-home spouse to do.

It drives me bonkers. I mean, she raised me on welfare and that was embarrassing enough that I never wanted to be there again, and I haven’t been. After I moved out and she had to work, she worked somewhere long enough until she “hurt her back” and could sue for medical claims. Then, she worked somewhere else long enough so she could find some reason to sue for discrimination because she’s a lesbian. And then she hooked up with an engineer who could afford to support them. And then she hooked up with a nurse, when the other relationship fell apart.

Mom’s just lazy. It’s not discrimination or agoraphobia (although I have no doubt she hurts). If people are genuinely afraid of going outside, my heart goes out to them and I wish them all the healing and help they can find! But the lazy? No way.

@daloon The way I see it, there are two groups. Those who make the best of the disorder they have and make what excuses they may because the things that they are doing are a facet of their disorder. Then there are those who get diagnosed with something (or self-diagnose, but that’s a whole different thing) and say “Yay, I can do whatever the hell I want because I have ______ and I can blame everything on that. I don’t have to try and do the right thing or the thing I’m supposed to be doing because I can use ______ as an excuse.” These are the people that I’m talking about who give everyone with legitimate problems a bad name.

I have my own serious diagnoses, as does my girlfriend. If I need accommodation because of that fact, I will ask for it frankly. I just object, as does the OP, if I understand correctly, to a certain type of person who never accepts responsibility for his actions, and always blames a syndrome.

It is my intention to spend the rest of my life as a psychotherapeutic clinician, so it must be clear that I believe that people become ill, and have symptoms. I am just saying that symptomology doesn’t relieve us of responsibility.

@daloon are you able to feel hypersexual but still choose not to cheat on your girlfriend? I would believe so, and that’s what I think this issue is about. I’m sure that @avvooooooo will correct me if I am wrong.

@pdworkin yes. I’m responsible for my actions. I don’t think there is any excuse for what I do but my choices, for which anyone may hold me responsible.

But @avvooooooo, I think you are going too far and being far too judgmental. I don’t think it’s any of your business what other people do in their private lives. If they cheat the government—or other people—there are processes for people to decide what is going on and whether rules are being followed or not.

You are like one of those “tut-tut” ladies. Like a clucking hen. You stick your nose in other people’s business and call names and you have no idea what the truth is. You’re just looking for some kind of validation of your own opinion, or maybe of yourself.

The irony is that you do not take responsibility for that. You don’t come out straight and ask for attention in an open way. You do these snide little criticisms in hopes of getting people to support you. You call “troll” all the time. I’m sorry, but it makes me sick. Why don’t you listen to people before you accuse them of things. This is particularly heinous because there are none of the people here you are talking about to explain their side of the issue.

Thanks, @daloon.

@daloon Its not the private, but the public that concerns me. I could care less what people do in private unless they’re endangering others, but what they do in front of me and everyone else becomes the business of the public. You make a lot of judgments about me without knowing much, including how much I have listened or how much I know. You have no idea what I deal with nor what I take responsibility for. The fact is that this question is not entirely about me although my thoughts were validated. I was wondering if I was alone in my observations and I find that I am not. Instead of chastising me for asking a question about people who make having legitimate mental illness harder on everyone, maybe you should think about the fact that these people do exist (just see from this question that other people have encountered them) and that they lead to problems with the way that people with mental health issues are received and dealt with. There are people who abuse every system, from food stamps to mental health who only make life harder for everyone else. Instead of going off at me for having no idea, maybe you should look at yourself and see if you really know what you’re talking about when you’re throwing things at me.

Most of the responses to this question can be rephrased like this: mental “illness” is a character flaw rather than an illness. Should the professionals that fraudulently provide diagnostic “covers” to all these malingerers be prosecuted?

@ratboy I’m sorry, no. Most people here, myself included, recognize that there is such a thing as mental illness and issues arising from it. Many people have this and deal with it every day, some make legitimate excuses, some do not. But there are those who exploit their illness, make one up, and do whatever they damn well please knowing that they can abuse their diagnosis to cover for things that they perfectly well have control over. That is the group that we are discussing. They’re the same type of people who would get on disability just to they don’t have to work and then go do the things that they’re supposedly unable to do because of their disability, if you want to take the discussion away from just mental health.

@ratboy Which responses even breathe a hint of that? Quote one for me, please.

I managed to accomplish a great deal in my academic and professional life despite my ADHD which wasn’t recognised until after my children were born. I had long known about my physical limitations. I struggled to adapt to what challenges I had but I never let them be excuses for not trying my best. I defined doing the best as doing the best I could do. Diagnoses may identify a person’s challenges but are not to be used as excuses for not trying and not taking responsibility for their own behavior. Most diagnosis don’t limit a person’s ability to act responsibly.

On the other hand, problems that seriously affect behaviour and judgment can be improved with medication. Patients who respond well to such treatment and stay with their medication regimen can function well in society. Unfortunately, when patients start to feel and function better, the often mistakenly think they are cured and stop taking their medications.

Many such people need regular monitoring – something most health insurance in tthe USA won’t pay for. Medications are often covered for inpatients (inside the hospital) but not for out-patients. Insurance companies often limit the duration of treatment and if patients can’t afford to pay, they are released, ready or not into the community.

Of course, the uninsured are released as soon as they are stabilized and they may be given a prescription they can’t afford to fill and without monitoring they will eventually be brought involuntarily to a hospital where they will resume their revolving door experience.

Patience with conditions that seriously impede their proper functioning in society get limited treatment if they have insurance, until time limits or the financial inability to meet deductibles and co-payments deny them further access to ongoing treatment, at which points they join the revolving door process of the uninsured.

The mental health system in the USA sets up patients for failure mainly because of how health care service in general in financed.

As long as proper health care is a privilege and not a right, many people who could function and be responsible members of society become burden to their families or society in general.

Is it not time for fundamental change?

Bravo @Dr_Lawrence.

I don’t see where it is my business to judge why people do what they do. If someone uses an excuse that is their own way of coping. What reason would I have to say it’s wrong or right? I’m not the judge. I take people at face value, if they want to make excuses that’s entirely up to them.

Thanks, @Dr_Lawrence.

@YARNLADY Your quip is full of a certain kind of shit.

Sorry, Ratboy. As someone who treats people with mental illness in my practice, I’d take exception to anyone prosecuting me.

@pdworkin:
“In reality, 99% of these kids were just badly behaved, with parents who payed them no attention, fed them nothing but take away food, and put them in front of the TV 24/7. These kids had nothing wrong with them, no diseases or medical conditions… they were just lazy attention seekers who wanted a free ride, so they blamed their problems on ADD or ADHD.”—@randomness

99%? What’s the source?

“It is my intention to spend the rest of my life as a psychotherapeutic clinician, so it must be clear that I believe that people become ill, and have symptoms. I am just saying that symptomology doesn’t relieve us of responsibility.”—@pdworkin

In which mental diseases does the symptomology not manifest itself in aberrant behavior? If you are diseased, can you choose not to exhibit the symptom?

@ratboy, @pdworkin was referring to the things that can be controlled that should be controlled. Not everyone with mental illness is completely out of control. There are areas that are difficult, but not all areas. Responsibility for behavior that has nothing to do with symptoms should be taken rather than doing whatever and blaming it all on the illness.

@ratboy Yes, you sure can choose not to exhibit! An affected person may not have a 100% perfect track record (not even an unaffected person has that great of a record), but there is still personal responsibility to be acknowledged. A cleptomaniac can choose not to steal – they have a choice. A bipolar person can choose not to participate in social events until after an episode has passed. Neither can snap their fingers and shake off these impulses, but they can slow down and make calmer decisions. I know this for a fact.

@ratboy The 99% quote I quite agree with you on. I must have skipped it because there are some people whose posts I have learned never to read.

However, I think you misunderstood what I said in my quip. You are conflating behavior with symptoms.

I didn’t have any problem reading any of them. I thought there were a lot of intelligent answers given.

<snicker>

Because something can be controlled, does that mean it should be controlled? I’m talking about non-violent situations, where the only person hurt is the person who is not controlled. Do we have a right to force “correct” decisions on other people?

I’m just having real trouble with all the normative assumptions being thrown around here. I don’t like it when we choose to play God just because we have the power to do so. I don’t like the way we have social pressure to act in certain ways when the “deviant” ways do not harm anyone else.

@daloon It depends if someone is being harmed. Let’s try an example. I would encourage a person with Tourette’s to just tic away. Even if the language is foul, I understand there is no intent to harm. But I expect a pedophile not to act on his proclivities. I think he should take responsibility for his behavior and sublimate his urges, not blame them on an “illness”.

@pdworkin . . . i would say a rider should be included deeming it “uncool” to use it to pick up chicks, as well.

@pdworkin, my point was that in the case of mental illnesses, behavior often is the symptom.

Well then, we would have to differentiate the behavior from the symptom. Take a look at my post above about Tourette’s Syndrome and pedophilia.

I’m sorry, but I find the motivation behind this question despicable. We have 2.4 million people in prison and jail in this country, of whom 25% to 40% are mentally ill (depending on how you categorize severity). This wouldn’t be happening were it not for busybodies like our OP drumming up the idea that the mentally ill are actually just faking it because they are of bad character.

Suppose you had asked a slightly different question: “There are black people out there who refuse to take responsibility for anything they do and instead choose to blame their poverty and their lack of accomplishment on things like racism and discrimination. Do you know someone like this? What is your opinion about that person and people like this in general?” we would immediately recognize this for the despicable race-baiting that it is.

There is nothing constructive in this question whatsoever. It is purely and simply an assault on human solidarity—it is an invitation to marginalize and despise an already marginalized and despised “other.” The only thing more disgusting thing was how readily people joined in and piled on in this “Let’s share our reasons for despising the mentally ill” hatefest.

Each person who contributes their little nugget of judgmentalism contributes to a more generalized perception that “people like that” are irresponsible and morally unworthy. People are encouraged to offer up their most outrageous case—which is necessarily a matter of perception and not of fact—creating a piling-on of anecdote after anecdote that crowds out any reasonable generalization about the mentally ill and their problems by focusing entirely on a skewed sample of people who claim to be mentally ill for some morally despicable reason. Of course, this tends to create a false sense of prevalence; that when people say they are mentally ill, it is likely they are just faking it because so many people “like that” are despicable. Obviously, people such people deserve no sympathy or consideration; they deserve to be thrown in prison.

The unstated message is that nobody is really mentally ill; its all just a lack of will power and moral grit. Nobody really gets demoralized because they have been stuck with some loathful diagnosis; nobody ever gets stuck on a track to second-class citizenship because of their diagnosis and feels doomed or stymied because of it. Nobody gets stuck in depression. They can cheer up anytime they want—they just don’t want to bad enough.

Anyone can claw his way to the top. And if they don’t exhibit this heroic exercise of will-power, it is not because they are ill, demoralized, discriminated against, or because they have gotten caught up in an industry of psychologists and drug companies who make their living off of pathologizing people without really helping them. No, it’s all the person’s own fault. His “behavior problems” are due to his bad character, which presumably springs full-grown from his evil nature—or because he grew up in a family that raises him poorly and feeds him take out food.

Anybody can overcome anything. If they can’t it’s their own fault. In any case, we certainly don’t owe them anything. So don’t you just hate them?

Bravo @Zuma!! You have clarified for me what I was feeling instinctively, but was unable to see in a more social context. If I could give you 100 lurve, I would.

@Zuma I have encountered the mentality you described, and I despise it. I don’t think that the OP was saying anything at all like that. I have been trained, and I believe she has too, always to look “upstream” for cultural violence to explain things like so-called non-compliance before I accuse a person of not taking responsibility for his own actions. I think your answer was passionate, thoughtful and worthwhile, except I think it was aimed at someone who doesn’t harbor the feelings you ascribe to her. I know that it would not be fair if you leveled the same criticism at me, and I have been supporting the OP all along here.

Great addition to the thread @Zuma. We can’t go through each person individually, deciding to what extent they are capable of being personally responsible for their actions. There has to be an accepted norm with adequate leeway that will allow most people, including the mentally ill, to fit. It’s too taxing on the general public to go through that with everyone who has a diagnosis in thier hand. The mentally ill person DOES have a to be responsible with how they deal with their issue(s). Some might suggest that, if they can drive a car, then they are capable of making decisions.

I’m not exactly going against what you’ve said, although it might seem like that, at first blush. I’m looking for a way to incorporate what both of us are saying. There has to be a middle ground, or we’ll end up at odds, the mentally ill versus the “normal” people.

I think Zuma has hit upon what disturbs me in this thread. I don’t think the OP intends to come across this way to me, nor do they intend to have a thread where everyone bashes the mentally ill that they know-because they can ‘tell’ when they’re ‘faking it’.

Whether or not it was intended the question’s wording, and that of the replies, makes me feel incredibly uneasy. I feel like there is a hostile environment here towards the mentally ill. Simply by saying that some people don’t have it as bad as they say they do or they can magically see what’s ‘real’ illness and what is just ‘excuses’, honestly makes me want to head for the hills.

I think it can appear to be ganging-up behavior because of the wording. It seems like this isn’t quite the deepest this question can go. Or perhaps it needed to be more specific so as not to sound like an attack on an entire segment of people.

Do I feel that Avvooooo intended to have it feel like a bash-fest? No, I don’t. I do feel that having so many people here say ‘they’re not that bad’ makes me not want to share a much from here on out. How will I know what you will think of me? Am I sick enough, pull myself up by my bootstraps enough and well enough to see right from wrong? Or will I just be yet another person who blames everything on their ‘mental illness’?

Because I can honestly tell you when I’m manic and tell you I can’t go to the grocery store because of my illness- I’m not shitting you. If you take me to the store when I’m hallucinating I will be a danger to myself and others. It might sound like something simple to you, yet when I’m hearing voices telling me to kill myself the last thing I can worry about is whether which jar of carrots is a better deal.

@gemiwing You are not describing someone who uses his or her diagnosis as a get-out-of-jail free card every time he or she behaves badly. I don’t think anyone here was attacking people who are mentally ill.

@pdworkin I feel things that look, to a healthy functioning person, like excuses can often be seen very differently from inside the mind of the sufferer.

Setting up a judgmental thread sets the precedent for thinking we can tell how seriously another person is incapacitated by their own illness. Mental illness is a tricky thing and is such a case by case issue, that I feel generalization does more harm than good.

What disturbs me is that there isn’t a real way to tell how much the person is using excuses, and what is honestly true. We can’t get into their minds enough and I feel it sets up a bashing scenario to even really try.

That’s why I used the example of going to the grocery store. It could sound like an excuse, yet when viewed below the surface makes more sense. Perhaps I wish we could try to see the connections going on instead of making judgmental calls about what is a ‘valid’ reason vs excuse to do whatever they want.

No, @gemiwing, it doesn’t sound outrageous. I’ve been trying to climb out of that hole since I was 14 years old. There is nothing I can do; the episodes are going to come no matter what. I find myself grabbing happiness with both hands in between those times so that I have some tiny little thread of hope to cling to when the mouth of hell swallows me whole. At those times, I can guaran-fucking-tee you that in little thread is all I’ve got.

I can barely function during those times, which can do some serious damage to your self-esteem. And then you wake from the event and laugh, trying to recapture the wedge of life that bipolar disorder ripped from you, before tossing you into the flames without so much as a flicker of acknowledgement that you’re worth anything more than a contemptuous snort. It turns me into a person I am not, and I have struggled beyond the telling of it, to be responsible enough to get the hell away from other people so that they don’t have it visited on them, too. And I can barely get even THAT done.

But see, nobody who hasn’t had it is ever going to understand it. How could they? It might be like asking a small child to give a dissertation on the Tolstoy novel of their choice. I don’t see people isolating the mentally ill here. What I see are people who have just enough energy to handle what they have to deal with. They’re already burdened to the hilt. I can’t really blame people for feeling like that, not even as a bipolar person, myself. Shit…..some people constantly operate at the breaking point, they have so much put on them. That isn’t hard for me to understand.

As a side note:

No I do not feel that mental illness should be an excuse to do whatever you want. We talk about personal responsibility a lot in mentally ill circles as it is incredibly difficult for us to be able to see the difference between the two sometimes.

When one is mentally ill, the lines of reality blur and you can no longer even trust your basic human emotions.

Am I really sad or am I getting sick again?
Am I really happy or do I need a med adjustment?
Am I really hungry or is it a side-effect of meds?
Am I really tired or is it my meds?

Very basic things are difficult for us. We struggle and perhaps to the outside world it appears we use our illness as an excuse too often. I think it’s just far-reaching and deeper than most people can understand without having personally dealt with it.

@phillis Lovely point. I agree and appreciate hearing your view on this.
@pdworkin I agree that the OP wasn’t intending for it to feel like a bash-fest. It just did to me and I wanted to figure out and explain why. People on Fluther (ok most people) wouldn’t do that to a general group of people. I’m sure I am reacting based upon my own experiences and preconceived notions. I don’t come from a vacuum after all it seems.

I’ll respond to everything individually later, but let me postulate a situation. A kindergartner says, “I can’t learn to tie my shoes because I’m ADD.” People who are ADD can tie their shoes, they are perfectly capable, but this is someone who does not want to behave in the way that they are capable of and wants to use their diagnosis as an excuse. I am not bashing the mentally ill, I do not hate the mentally ill. I was simply discussing those who “work” or “milk” their diagnoses for all they’re worth, past the point of what can reasonably be attributed to their disorder and to the point where its just an excuse for behavior that isn’t actually an excuse for their behavior. Just like the situation where the kindergartner won’t do something that they are supposed to and uses his diagnosis as an excuse for why he can’t when its perfectly obvious that he can, and that what he’s trying to get away with while using his diagnosis as an excuse for has practically nothing to do with his diagnosis. The “I can do whatever I want and blame it on the diagnosis whether it has anything to do with it or not” attitude is what I was talking about in the question.

“A cleptomaniac can choose not to steal – they have a choice.”—@phillis

Kleptomania is an impulse control disorder; what characterizes such disorders is not having strong impulses or urges, but the inability not to act on those urges. Here are the diagnostic criteria for kleptomania from the DSM-IV:

• Repeated theft of objects that are unnecessary for either personal use or monetary value.
• Increasing tension immediately before the theft.
• Pleasure or relief upon committing the theft.
• The theft is not motivated by anger or vengeance, and is not caused by a delusion or hallucination.
• The behavior is not better accounted for by a conduct disorder , manic episode , or antisocial personality disorder.

If you can choose not to steal, then you’re not a kleptomaniac regardless of how strong your impulse to steal is.

@pdworkin, this is an example where the behavior is the symptom.

@ratboy That describes bipolar disorder to a “T”. SO I guess I can give up my lofty dreams of taking repsonsibility during an episode and just have a free-for-all, right?

I know that isn’t what you’re suggesting. I was just making a point.

Unlike an alcoholic, who has an organic dependency and MUST have alcohol until treatment can be rendered, in the end it is ultimately a choice. We can choose to bleed over into the lives of others by giving into those impulses, or not.

You can pull out the entire DSM IV axis to cover your argument, but it won’t matter a hill of beans to everybody else whose reality is with me, and not with psychiatric books. My way of thinking is what makes the world a little more tolerable for everyone around me, so I’ll stick with pure ignorance on this one, if you don’t mind.

That’s your official assessment then? Heheheh :)

@Zuma – re: if someone asked about black people blaming their situation on poverty, it would be a race-baiting question…

Do you remember a while back when Obama gave this speech? Was it racist? If there were no people like that, it would be racist – but, in reality, there are some people that say that because they’re black and poor, they cannot succeed. If I said all of them were like that, I’d be a horrible racist. But they’re not.

Similarly, I think we can all agree that the vast majority of people who are diagnosed with a mental illness really are suffering and really need help. Then, there are the small minority of them that the question is about. Like my mom, for example – who, once diagnosed with agoraphobia, decided she liked it, refused treatment, and demanded that she not be made to leave the house except when it was convenient and she wanted something ever again.

Nobody here is saying that all people with mental issues are lazy, or bad. If so, it would be the kind of baiting question you’re talking about, and would be unacceptable in polite company.

@laureth GA I’m really glad you said that because I was thinking it and just didn’t know how to put it into words!

I do not believe that the OP was claiming that all people with mental health problems blame all their actions on the illness, if I thought that then I would feel offended myself but I do know what she means and yes, some people do use whatever condition they have been diagnosed with as an excuse for all their actions. As I said in a previous comment, I used to work with a girl who was a prime example. The way I see it, if you blame everything you do on an illness then the illness has won.

[Mod Says:] A gentle reminder to stick to the topic and not get personal. Personal and off-topic remarks will be removed.

There is no reason to get mad at kids or teenagers ‘using’ their ADD diagnoses – their parents have shown them that example and really it shouldn’t matter to you what anyone uses as an excuse because your responsibility is for you, as a member of society, to be taking care of your own actions. I have met plenty of ‘sane’ people who hate responsibility, I have met plenty of ‘mentally ill’ people who over compensate and do better than the rest of us. All this has taught me is that extraordinary people will always exist, no matter the disorder and the ordinary will always be jealous.

This has been an interesting thread to read. I understand the passion behind many of the responses. I am, in my thinking, probably close to @daloon and @Zuma whereas I think the mentally ill are marginalized enough and people don’t understand squat about certain disorders – just in this thread alone, many have talked about how ADD is used as an excuse so often and how people with ADD can do what they say they can’t…in reality, there is a range of disorders, there is a range in how people respond to medication, if at all…there can be other conditions in addition that a person many have…one’s social environment matters…

We should improve the world for those who are mentally ill even though that category seems to be expanding based on pharma driven defitions and disorders (my ambivalance about all this is discussed in a later @daloon question on pain and the need to stop pain). To the OP: though some people will use their diagnoses as excuses, let it go. It is better to be compassionate and have them use a ‘fake’ excuse then to contribute to a stigma that those who actually need the excuse experience.

Perhaps it comes down to the way the question is asked.

There are people out there who refuse to take responsibility for anything they do and instead choose to blame their actions on things they have been diagnosed with or that they have self-diagnosed themselves with. Do you know someone like this? What is your opinion about that person and people like this in general?

It makes an assumption about people out there, without offering any evidence to support the proposition. In fact, what it is doing is asking for people’s experiences, as if that constitutes evidence for the phenomenon. As such, it is a baiting question. Trolling, if you prefer. The question just invites people to bash certain others who they believe are lazy.

As such, I think this question is as irresponsible as the supposed behavior of those the question seeks to out. A question like this really isn’t interested in answers, as I said before. It just seeks validation of the OP’s opinion. “Come on folks! Let’s gather around and spit at the lazy people. Won’t that be fun?”

I’m trying to think of a way to ask this question in a neutral fashion. Maybe “Are there people who blame the things they do on a mental illness? How often is this blame justified? Is this behavior an indication that a person is being irresponsible?” Ok, that wasn’t so hard. Then people wouldn’t feel unfairly picked on, and the prejudices of the OP wouldn’t be involved in subverting the discussion.

You know, I would like to believe that @avvooooooo is as well-intentioned as her friends seem to think she is, but I am afraid her example of a 5 year-old child invoking ADD as an “excuse” for why he can’t tie his shoes doesn’t quite wash.

First of all, what kind of 5-year old understands what a clinical diagnosis is, much less understands what is and is not possible when one has ADD? Indeed, what kind of 5-year old feels the need to “work” an adult by “milking” a clinical diagnosis? Since when do 5-year old feel the necessity to make “excuses” for not knowing how to tie their shoes?

It seems pretty obvious to me that this 5-year old didn’t get the idea that ADD is a limiting condition all by himself. This is the work of meddlesome adults who have pathologized the child’s behavior, convinced him he has limits, and saddled him with a stigmatizing label. In other words, this is a classic example of learned helplessness—or, perhaps more accurately, taught helplessness.

Second, since when have five-year olds become so lazy, manipulative and ill-intentioned that they need to “work” adults by invoking their clinical diagnoses as “excuses” for not being able to tie their shoes? It seems pretty obvious to me that shoe-tying has has become a contentious issue in this instance, and that it is the adult who is offering exculpatory excuses for why the child has “failed” to learn. Rather than persisting and patiently taking a new tack, the adult is throwing up her hands and blaming the child for “failing” to learn. According to the adult, the child is “milking his diagnosis” by offering “excuses” that the adult just happens to “know” is ill-intentioned and wrong.

Of course, if you are 5 years old and don’t know how to tie your shoes, and you are saddled with an impatient and judgmental adult for a teacher, how are you supposed to know that it isn’t your ADD that’s at fault? What kind of adult accuses a 5-year old of “milking a diagnosis”? What a lazy, cunning despicable creature that child must be to try to manipulate an adult so!

Third, what kind of adult accuses a 5-year old of “milking a diagnosis” to explain their failure to teach that child how to tie his shoes. What a betrayal to lay that kind of onus on a child so young. What an assault on the child’s sense of reality! Especially, since the child’s sense of reality is already under assault and undermined by the label of “crazy” and to have a teacher lay accusations of bad character on top of it!. Imagine being that 5 year-old kid, diagnosed with ADD and stuck with an adult like that in a position of power over your life—an adult who feels both empowered and entitled to write such damaging characterological information in your permanent record. I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with such an adult. I’d be inclined to tell that person anything to get them the fuck away from me.

So, no. The primary purpose of this question this isn’t necessarily about getting a bash-fest going. It’s about an adult who is “milking the diagnosis” and using accusations of bad character to “explain” her own failures as a teacher. And, as if this weren’t disgusting enough, the person comes to a public forum like this to seek validation for having abused and betrayed the child using the pretext of clinical expertise.

No wonder we have so many mentally ill people in prison.

@Zuma Your remarks are completely wrong, but completely in character. You are talking a lot and saying nothing.

To address one of the MANY areas where you are completely wrong, I am not a teacher and I do not teach 5 year olds to tie their shoes. I used an example and, as you did with the question, you turned it into something it isn’t. Bad form and completely irrational.

@avvooooooo it’s not completely irrational – it makes a lot of sense to me, actually…I am not trying to antagonize you, either…it just seems like we can spend our lives better than considering what kids use as excuses ‘these days’...

I think that folks blame their behavior on whatever they can get away with so long as they don’t have to blame themselves.

I will be the first to step forward and completely own my entire life up to this point. Good times, bad times, shitty decisions, ridiculous behavior, and transcendent moments. I am responsible for all of these, whether directly through my actions or by the way I chose to react to them.

I quit making excuses a long time ago. In fact, it was right about the time I quit giving a fuck what other people think.

which i think is a major factor in this debate

@avvooooooo Denying that it happened doesn’t negate that you have constructed this event in your mind. The fact remains that you are the kind of person who would accuse a 5-year old of bad character and “milking their diagnosis,” and all that this implies.

@Zuma So you’re willing to call me a horrendous evil person for a hypothetical situation with a hypothetical 5 year old and you’re not being irrational. Yeah, that makes sense. There are children who do this for whatever it is that they don’t wish to do. Whether you wish to believe this or not doesn’t change that fact. Children learn to make excuses as a part of development. Then they don’t want to do something, they might tell you “I don’t wanna” or they might say “I can’t do that because…” There are kids who do things to see what they can get away with. If they have something convenient to blame for their simply refusing to do something or for doing things they shouldn’t, they very well might choose to do this. Whether they’re taught or they come up with it is irrelevant when you consider the fact that the diagnosis is used as an excuse past the point where it reasonably is an excuse. Then they grow into adults who push limits and find things to blame for their refusal to do what they need to in favor of what they want to.

I am in no way generalizing MY discussion in the way that you are. I am talking about a specific group of people who _abuse their diagnoses._I’m sorry for you if you cannot figure out that there is a difference between a large group and a small subsection that makes life more difficult for the larger group.

@avvooooooo there is no such thing as that ‘large group’ that you’re talking about

[mod says] Let’s try to get back to the original topic. Thanks!

@Simone_De_Beauvoir The “large group” I was referring to is the considerable number of people with diagnoses of mental illness. Which do exist.

@avvooooooo yes, that I know…anyway, I’ll leave now as per mod’s request

I don’get this question. Everyone who is human, whether mentally impaired, or not, makes excuses for their actions, at one time or another and many times throughout their lives . I’ve never been diagnosed with a mental impairment, but I sure have made a lot of excuses in my life, for all my bad decisions and actions. We can only take responsibility for our actions, if we are aware of them.

Someone who is mentally impaired, or has behavior problems etc., aren’t always capable mentally to take responsiblity, for their actions. Their minds don’t allow it. They may perceive situations that they, may think are totally someone else’s fault, and no matter what you say to them, they just aren’t going to see it that way, because of their mental impairment.

@avvooooooo I suspect that Zuma coming down on you just for your use of an example here. I suspect he has seen how you behave over the months (years?) you both have been here. Just a suspicion, though. I don’t know for sure.

However, I know that I have seen you behave in a way that I consider to be an overreaction a number of times. You appear to me to be inclined to think the worst of people. Just as an example, I have seen you label people as trolls far too many times for my taste.

I think you are overreacting to people you think are trying to come up with unjustifiable excuses for their behavior. I think it bothers you so much so that you get carried away with your feelings, which makes it difficult for you to be open to other points of view, or to be charitable to the people you are bashing.

I hope you will consider what I say without just dismissing it in a knee-jerk way. I think it is worth looking at people with more empathy, when you see them doing things you despise. Maybe you do this in real life, and for some reason you don’t do it here, at least on the questions and comments I see from you.

There but for the grace of God go I. You never know when you may find yourself in shoes you thought you’d never be wearing. There is no need to round up a posse and go running after all the kids (if any) who say they can’t do something because of a mental illness.

You suggest that it costs the public, and by implication, that many people who get public services or extra help are really just squeezing the public teat dry. That’s why you have a legitimate interest in the subject. I don’t think you are basing this idea on scientific evidence. I think you are just expressing your prejudices and hoping that others share them. I hope you would consider trying to be a little more empathetic and open minded. I doubt if you know where all the people you are pointing your finger at have been in life. Just as I have no idea where you have been in life. The things you say upset me strongly. I would never react this way otherwise.

This has all been very enlightening, in more ways than one. Thanks for the candid responses, you guys. I learned a lot more tonight than I knew before. Hopefully you guys can decipher my post this time, because there is a thank you buried in there if you care to look. Either way, I’m happy :)

@daloon No, I am responding to @avvooooooo entirely on the basis of what I see here, which I find plenty disturbing enough.

@avvooooooo I ask again, What kind of person imagines that 5-year olds are capable of “milking their diagnoses,” much less thinks who thinks this is a big enough problem to bring it up in a forum like this? It seems to me, that if you are willing to impute such bad moral character to a 5-year old, you are willing to impute such character to anyone and, thereby create a problem where there is none.

What possible use is your invidious distinction between the “virtuous” mentally ill and the “unvirtuous” mentally ill except to cast moral aspersions on the “unvirtuous.” It certainly isn’t motivated by a desire to help these “irresponsible” mentally ill. If we are supposed to believe that it it’s the irresponsible crazies who make life so difficult for the fine, morally upstanding “responsible” crazies, where is the part of the question directed toward setting that right?

Now, it is true that mentally ill people sometimes exaggerate their symptoms or trade on their diagnoses in order to get out of things, or get a pass on behavior, they wouldn’t otherwise be able to get away with. And this seems to offend the meritocratic sensibility of those who feel “put upon” to cut the ill person some slack. Now, who among us has never called in sick when we weren’t really sick, or took a mental health day when we weren’t really mentally ill? So, the great bulk of this sort of behavior just the moral slippage of everyday life.

However, when it comes to more severe mental illness, different factors come into play. Our society does not, by any stretch of the imagination, come anywhere near to meeting the needs of its mentally ill citizens. The idea that someone with a mental illness should “take responsibility” for his illness and make good decisions—take his meds and otherwise exert himself to get better—is predicated on the assumption that if the ill person makes this effort, his society will devote the resources necessary to reclaim, rehabilitate, and redeem him from madness. But as anyone who knows the score can tell you, that help is almost never forthcoming. Our society simply does not respond to madness in good faith.

Mental health services are scandalously underfunded. The shift to drugs as a primary treatment modality was motivated by an effort to cut the high cost of talking psychotherapy. We emptied the nation’s mental hospitals and turned their inhabitants out into the streets to fend for themselves. We then cut back the existing community mental health centers that were to deal with this onslaught.

So, now, when the afflicted alienate their families, lose their jobs, cars, and housing, they only deteriorate—and they keep on deteriorating until they end up in the criminal justice system, where their problems become incomparably worse. In prison, they act out; they decompensate; they fail to comply; and instead of getting any help they are punished. Those least able to deal with punishment end up in solitary confinement and become broken beyond all imagining and they get caught in a revolving door of parole violations which further undermines any prospect of regaining their mental health.

Now, as it happens, there is a certain pleasure in madness. Part of what makes manias, delusions and psychoses so seductive is that there is a kind of intoxicating excitement to them, and a sense of liberation in living outside the confining norms and conventions of “normality.” Part of the road back to sanity involves coming to terms with the relative compensations of madness versus the benefits of sanity—which are by no means clear-cut. You can’t automatically assume that a mentally ill person will necessarily see “being well” as a desirable goal.

Quite often “getting better” and “being well” entails having to take medications which have very uncomfortable or noxious side effects—like permanent, uncontrollable muscle tremors, a loss or an amplification of emotion, stupor, a ringing in the ears, agitation, and anxieties that range from merely irritating, to feelings of being on pins and needles. In addition to the discomfort, there is the hassle and humiliation of having to show up and bare oneself to the intrusive and not always sympathetic gaze of therapists, who are often rushed, perfunctory, officious, self-important, disrespectful and puffed up with an exaggerated sense of their own expertise. Then there is also a considerable loss of autonomy, particularly the a loss of the secret pleasures of one’s illness, and of being able to live life on one’s own terms.

When you think about all the things that a mentally ill person has to deal with —the labeling, the stigma, the insecurity, the discomfort, the desperate inadequacy of what passes for help—the last fucking thing you need to deal with is some judgmental chicken shit twit fussing about whether or not someone is “milking his diagnosis.” That is the absolute least of anyone’s problems.

Unless and until our society begins taking mental illness seriously and starts devoting the resources necessary to actually help the afflicted, the mentally ill are under absolutely no obligation to “take responsibility” or live up to any other expectation of “normal” people. If you are going to stigmatize someone with a clinical diagnosis that renders them a second-class citizen, and then withhold from them the means of getting back to being a full and trusted member of society, then the very least you can do is cut them some slack. If they don’t feel like tying their shoes, fuck those shoes!

@Zuma I was hoping you would expand a little on your feelings about medications. When I was in a State hospital in the 1960s, it’s my opinion that medications were used to punish and control the inpatients. Anectine, for example, a frightening paralytic, was administered as a punishment.

I am under the impression that nowadays, though these abuses are less common, and that modern neuroleptics genuinely assist people. I would be interested in learning your opinion.

@pdworkin Oh my gosh! My heart goes out to you. State hospitals are not much better than prisons then or now.

I used to work as a research scientist for a state mental health program, so I got to tour both prisons and mental hospitals. Later I went to prison on a petty drug charge. Nowadays mental hospitals are reserved for those too mentally incompetent to stand trial, people who are guilty but insane, or who are “sexually violent predators”. My sense from visual observation is that they are all way over-medicated. I can’t think of why someone diagnosed as a pedophile would need to be medicated, other than to impede his ability to think for himself or otherwise resist the program (as patient lawsuits allege).

I have no doubt that medications are used to subdue and manage patients. So, of course, it’s virtually inevitable that they find their way into disciplining and punishing patients, especially given the behaviorist “actions-must-have-consequences” orientation of those in control and the “us against them” culture of total institutions. At least in the mental hospitals they maintain the pretense that they are “helping” the patient; although “help” in this context tends to mean turning the person into a docile automaton.

In the prisons there is no pretense of helping anybody. And California prisons are so over crowded (see second link above) that every aspect of medication and treatment is subordinated to the disciplinarian exigencies and philosophy of the people who run the place. Prison psychiatrists are simply spread too thin to effectively manage any kind of treatment program for those nominally in their care. Prison shrinks are there mainly to help predict who is actually going to kill himself or another, as opposed to merely thinking about it. Prison shrinks also tend to be the absolute bottom of the medical barrel; so, over time, they tend to become little more than guards with prescription pads.

I suppose that some of the newer drugs do genuinely help people, but my experience in trying to get simple over the counter meds like Metamucil or Tylenol, cost plays a significant, if not determining, role in what patients get. So, it is very unlikely that prisoners will get the newer, more effective drugs if they entail any kind of expense, or if it requires the little bit of exertion for staff to get it on the formulary.

Medication in prison is also complicated by the fact that over half the people there are there on drug charges—i.e., “self-medicating” on the street. So, as you can imagine, people who get meds don’t always get them in order to get well. They angle to get whatever they can to feel good, zone out, and, if possible, to sell to other prisoners. Where I was there was a brisk business in Seroquel, a powerful anti-psychotic that is very much in demand as a sleeping pill for people trying to cope with the noise and turmoil of dormatory life (where 200 men are commonly crowded into a space the size of a basketball court). Seroquel was abundant in both the jail and the prison I attended despite a $600 million class action lawsuit because it causes diabetes, pancreatitis, tardive dyskinesia, and even death.

Of course, prison doctors know that there is a better than even chance that whatever they prescribe will be consumed by someone other than the person it is written for. So, there is a general presumption of bad faith, such that if there is a particular drug you want, they will make sure you don’t get it; and if there is a drug you don’t want, they will make sure you are forced to take it. Naturally, if you happen to know that there is an effective drug that cures what ails you, there is a good chance you won’t get it. Nominally, prisoners have the right to refuse to take psychiatric medications, but there are always “consequences” to any whiff of hint of resistance to the powers that be.

Thank you so much. It was not the happiest experience in my life. Thank God I was in Camarillo, and not Atascadero. I’m sure if you know the system in California you will understand why, although 45 years ago Camarillo was quite primitive, and there were a lot of schizophrenics being “managed” with a regimen that guaranteed tardive dyskinesia.

I am quickly scrolling past the point where it got nasty, but I do think the OP’s point was….“How many kids /adults today feel like they don’t have to take responsibility for their own action because they’ve been “DIAGNOSED”!!! with…..whatever.”
Right? I have increasingly seen that in my dealings with children, and adults, a kind of “Well, I guess I’ll just curl-up- and- die” mentality, like, “there’s no use going on. I’ve been..DIAGNOSED! It’s hopeless for me….”

@Val123 Oooh…..good point! We haven’t hit on that one yet. You are so right! For some people, the news can be devastating. For many years my grandmother and I tried to come up with a way to pay for me to attend a Sylvan Learning Center type of place because I had obvious comprehension problems. We thought that would be perfect for me, that the problem I was having was how I was recieving incoming information.

Well, I never went because of the money issue, but it worked out for the best, because I later requested the doctor’s evaluations from when I was tested for this very thing back in 1982. Come to find out, I had brain damage. There just ain’t no coming back from that. I’m serious – it hit me like a ton of damn bricks. It took me nearly a year to crawl out of the bitterness, anger and resentment of that. It came from the abuse my mother heaped onto me.

I think it’s really important that we give a newly diagnosed person some time to sort through thier feelings about these things, don’t you? There is definitely a period of adjustment. Depending on the person, they could shrug it off right there in the doctor’s office, or it could take them longer, like it did me. No amount of medication can fix what is wrong with me. Eventually I DID learn to live with it, but getting to that acceptance really kicked my ass. Maybe others have the same reaction.

@Zuma I hope one day you and I can meet, and I can buy you a cookie. Well said.

@Val123 That’s exactly what I thought the OP was getting at which is why I am surprised at why so many people took offence to the question.

@Val123 @Leanne1986 Have you not been paying attention, or are you being deliberately obtuse?

Yes, the question is about people who “don’t take responsibility because they’ve been diagnosed.” So, what is it about “those people” you wish to discuss, if not their perceived moral failure to “take responsibility” (which, by the way, is entirely your perception)?

Did you ever stop to think about what a diagnosis of mental illness is? It is an official recognition that you cannot take responsibility because you are INSANE!!! So, what’s the point of belaboring the issue of responsibility-taking if not to turn mental illness back into a moral failing—the way it was before we began viewing mental illnesses as illnesses? It’s bad enough getting tagged as “crazy” without having to bear a moral stigma as well, especially when it involves being held responsible for something one is unable to do.

Who decides what level of responsibility a person can take? That is entirely between the ill person and his therapist—not judgmental bystanders.

@Leanne1986 How can you read @phillis’ answer to @Val123 and not be struck by how devastating a diagnosis can be?

Imagine yourself receiving any kind of clinical diagnosis of even moderate seriousness, particularly at a young age. You may, with heroic effort, manage to get yourself through a couple years of community college, but it soon begins to dawn on you, if your symptoms are at all apparent to others, that you will never become a fully trusted member of society. You will never get into graduate school; you will never be able to hold a medical licence, or be admitted to any other profession. You will never be trusted other people’s money, property or confidences. You will never be trusted to be alone with other people’s children. You will never be allowed to drive a bus, much less fly a plane—and, depending on the severity of your illness, you may not be employable at all.

Without employment, you are left to depend on the grudging “generosity” of the state—a stipend sufficient for flop houses and single room occupancy hotels, punctuated with bouts of homelessness. If you can stay in one place for eight years, you may land a federally subsidized Section 8 housing gig, which you just might manage to hold on to until you have another serious episode. You will live in a medicated fog, always wondering if you are really hungry, happy, sad or tired, or if it’s your meds (see above)—if you can remember to take your meds, and you don’t become so confused that you forget you have taken your meds and you keep taking them over and over until you OD.

Whole broad swaths of society will not want anything to do with you, including your family whom you will eventually wear out because they can’t cope with your illness and have any semblance of a normal life. Naturally, the people you are most likely to meet are people as bad or worse off than yourself. So, good luck on finding a mate that doesn’t add further complication to your already complicated life. In such circumstances, it is easy to fall into bad company and drugs. Once on drugs, it is only a matter of time before you end up in jail or prison. And then, you’re really screwed.

When it dawns on you what your diagnosis truly entails, you may just want to curl up and die. In fact, many people do. I had a good friend who was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, who was simply beyond the reach of the meager resources of the county mental health department. So, one day he took a shot of heroin, turned on the gas, went to sleep and never woke up. Those of us who knew him and his dim prospects for getting well had to agree that it was the logical thing to do.

So, perhaps now you can see why some people might take offence at the shocking insensitivity of this question.

@Zuma Please do not treat me like I am ignorant. I know full well how devastating a diagnoses can be. I live it everyday thank you very much and if you had read my first post on this thread you will see that I have not been judgemental at all but I draw the line at people using their mental health issues (or any other issues for that matter) as an excuse to steal out of a till (amongst other unproffessional offences which affected colleagues) which is what the girl was doing in the example in my original post. I was more leniant with that girl than I would be usually because I knew of her issues and, suffering from similar disorders as her, felt that I should try to be sympathetic but she started putting other peoples jobs at risk and then using her mental health issues as an excuse. That is when I started to get angry because she wasn’t the only one suffering and yet, I (and I know I am not alone here) could stop myself from stealing. This was just a case of her not wanting to take responsibility for the actions she probably would have committed regardless of any diagnosis.

Maybe I read the question in a different way to you but, as someone who does know what mental health illnesses can do to a person, I will not be told how I should feel about it.

Edit: I also forgot to mention that if anyone claims that I am not able to take responsibility for myself because of a certain disorder I have then that is what offends me.

I think I’ve found the crux of the issue here. Is a diagnosis, as @Zuma says, “an official recognition that you cannot take responsibility because you are INSANE”? Or is it something that people have some sort of responsibility to try to deal with?

When someone has horrible physical trauma, they can choose to give up, or they can try to keep going with something like physical therapy. Is it the same, sometimes (not all the time) with mental illness?

@Leanne1986 “However, as someone who also has mental health issues to deal with but still remains professional in the work place (as do so many others) my sympathy started to wear thin when she constantly refused to take responsibility for her actions. I started to get angry that she was using a genuine illness (I don’t doubt for a moment that she had issues) as an excuse for being at best, slightly unprofessional on a very regular basis and at worst, a thief.”

“if you blame everything you do on an illness then the illness has won.”

Certainly that’s true. Why can’t more mentally ill people be professional and virtuous like you?

@Zuma I do understand that being there are “illnesses” or a condition that can actually affect one’s ability to learn, and can affect the way one behaves. No one is disputing that. However, the OP is saying that there are those who use their “diagnosis” as an excuse to not give their best, or to excuse certain behaviors that they ARE capable of controlling, even if they can’t control it 100%. They can at least try. A man who physically abuses his wife and children, for example, who says, “It’s not my fault! I’ve been diagnosed with Anger Issues!”
I have had kids in the class room who refuse to even TRY to control their disruptive behavior, using the excuse “I CAN’T! My mom says I’m ADHD! She says I can’t control myself!” They don’t even try.
I don’t think Avooooo is referring to the actual, mentally insane. The kind who need to be hospitalized.
@phillis Is a very, very good example. As an adult she was diagnosed with brain damage due to physical abuse she received as a child. My gosh, yes that would be a horrible thing to learn! But at that point she had two choices: Either give up and say, “nothing I can do anyway,” and just let her life go down the drain, or 2) Stand up and fight. She chose #2. I can’t begin to tell you how much respect I have for that women. There aren’t even any words for it.

Thank you so much, Val. All I ever wanted was to fix it and just be normal.

@phillis Well, you seem perfectly normal to me! More than the average person, actually. ;)

@Zuma So theft is ok in your opinion providing the thief is mentally ill? This girl was offered help by the company even after she was caught stealing from the till and she refused it saying that she just needed some time off work and she’d be fine when she came back. They gave her time off and when she came back nothing had changed. She left of her own accord in the end after she was confronted for her unprofessionalism. I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and I never claimed to be but I wouldn’t expect anyone to have patience with me if I stole and put others peoples jobs at risk especially after I had been offered help.

Just out of interest, are you trying to be patrionising? You asked me if I could imagine how hard it is to deal with a diagnoses of mental illness and I said yes. Now if the only response you have is sarcasm, which is how your last post sounded, then I’d rather just agree to disagree with you on certain issues here and leave it at that.

@Leanne1986 Yep. Nothing at all should be done to anyone who does anything, no matter how bad it is, if they can say, “The devil made me do it.” No one should be fired, no one should be jailed. We just need to let them do what they want and feel sorry for them and try to understand them.

I don’t know how this thread turned so many corners. All of us know someone who milks the system and doesn’t deserve it.

@Leanne1986 ”...the OP is saying that there are those who use their “diagnosis” as an excuse to not give their best, or to excuse certain behaviors that they ARE capable of controlling, even if they can’t control it 100%. They can at least try.”

How do you know they aren’t trying? Are you this person’s therapist? Can you read minds? No, you are just a judgmental bystander who assumes that just because you can make it everyone else can too—and if they can’t it’s not because because they are sicker than you, it’s because they “aren’t trying.” They aren’t responsible and virtuous like you. Why, oh why, can’t people be as holy as thou?

No, I’m not saying that theft is okay. That’s why we give mentally ill people SSI, so they don’t have to place themselves in stressful situations where these sorts of temptations might come up. So why is it that this troublesome woman you speak of is in the workplace? One obvious explanation is that she can’t live on her paltry SSI check. So, she feels compelled to “try” working—which might actually succeed if this was a sheltered work environment where employees are not subject to group punishments or the toxic attitudes of self-righteous coworkers like yourself.

“A man who physically abuses his wife and children, for example, who says, ‘It’s not my fault! I’ve been diagnosed with Anger Issues!’”

Nice try, but this never happens because “Anger Issues” is not a clinical diagnosis. But, even if it were, it would never be offered as an “excuse” for abusive behavior, because men who abuse their wives and children are removed from the home regardless of why it occurred.

“I have had kids in the class room who refuse to even TRY to control their disruptive behavior, using the excuse “I CAN’T! My mom says I’m ADHD! She says I can’t control myself!” They don’t even try.”

Oh really? Are these actual facts? Or are these perceptions filtered through the lens of self-righteous moralizing? But even if it were true, whose fault is it that these kids are too demoralized to “even try.” Who laid this awful diagnosis on them? Who is it that uses this diagnosis to undermine the kid’s natural drives toward autonomy? Who is it that sets the kid up for failure, day in and day out, so that the kid doesn’t feel like taking a risk and failing once again? Indeed, who is it that lays moral judgment on the kid himself, who rolls her eyes and otherwise conveys to the kid that he’s a moral failure for “not even trying”? Where do you get off pushing this kind of moral onus off on kids?

@Val123 It is exactly your attitude that is responsible for the fact that we have between 600,000 and 920,000 mentally ill people incarcerated in this country. We are the only country in the world that punishes the mentally ill. We are the only country in the world who executes the mentally retarded and the mentally ill.

We also have upward of 20,000 mentally ill people kept in solitary confinement for years at a time, when 13 days is considered barbaric under the rules of war. It is exactly the attitude that you have enunciated that is used to justify keeping mentally ill people in solitary confinement even after they have become so psychotic that they smear shit on themselves and gibber unintelligibly. If they don’t return their food tray through the slot in the door in a snappy enough manner to suit their jailors, they tear gas, taser and beat the guy, then given him more time in solitary until he can “behave” for six months without incident. Who knows when you will meet one of these guys in a dark parking lot?

@Zuma Nothing that you quoted in italics above came from me, I never said these people don’t try so please get your facts straight before you write another of your essays. I am not holier than thou and yes, there are people that do need more help than I do, I have absolutely no problem with that and if it wasn’t for a certain amount of help that I have recieved I may not be able to work on a regular basis. Please do not accuse me of something I am not just to get your point across.

Now, back to the point I was making and in answer to your question, the woman was in the work place because, like all of us (not just the mentally ill), she needed the money. She was offered help after she was caught stealing and she refused it. She made that choice. So far in this discussion the only thing that I have said is unacceptable in my opinion is blaming theft on a mental health issue, putting other peoples jobs at risk. If that makes me “holier than thou” then so be it.

You appear to be picking a fight with me just because I came up with an example that I didn’t think was acceptable and then when you ask me if I know what it’s like to deal with certain illnesses and I tell you that I do you accuse me of being holier than thou and not as ill as other people. I experienced her actions on a daily basis and not a single one of my co-workers was judgemental or toxic, I even said in my first post that despite the fact that she was causing problems she ws actually a nice girl and I am still in touch with her now. Please don’t pretend to know what happened when you weren’t there. She was offered help, she refused it. That is the bottom line.

@Leanne1986 Sorry, those quotes were from Val123; so those remarks should have been addressed to her. If you don’t see how you are being self-righteous, there is no use belaboring the point.

@Zuma May I suggest that before you accuse others of being self righteous or “holier than thou” that you read you own posts. If you believe that I am self righteous just because I don’t agree with theft then we will have to agree to disagree. The only thing I am guilty of here is not instantly taking offence to the OP’s question and not accusing her of bad intention.

@Leanne1986 I gather that you are mentally ill, although I don’t know what your illness is. However, if you have been depressed perhaps you might remember a time when you refused help because you didn’t feel you deserved it?

When I was depressed, I actively fought off help. I wanted to end up homeless. I wanted the punishment because I felt so bad that nothing could justify it except being the dregs of society.

Mentally ill people often refuse help. People usually don’t understand this because it isn’t rational in their world. However in an ill person’s world, it can make sense. If you are the bottom of the shithole, then you deserve nothing good. If people don’t understand that, you have to make them understand it.

I’m not saying that this is what your friend was doing, but it certainly could have been. Theft can be a call for help, but a call that one has to deny because one is not allowed to ask for help. Help has to be give, over and over, until one understands it is truly meant. That’s how it was for me, and I’m sure that’s how it is for some others.

Like Zuma said, people are labeled as mentally ill because they don’t behave as we expect normal people to behave. I know. I’ve been there, and, to some extent, I am there. My behavior doesn’t make sense to my normal self. I don’t seek to justify it because I am ill, although it could explain it. I just figure I’m selfish and anti-social. Or something like that. I prefer to condemn myself before anyone else does it for me. It’s easier that way.

@daloon I completely understand this. I too have refused help in the past (and still do to a certain extent), not so much because I felt that I didn’t deserve it but because I didn’t trust it. I do think she may have refused help for the reasons you stated but my point to @Zuma was that people tried to understand, tried to help and no one treated her badly or in a toxic way because they were aware of her issues and yet he is calling myself and those I work with self righteous, judgemental and holier than thou. I am grateful for the people I work with because it’s nice to know that if I ever needed their understanding then, judging by their past actions, I will more than likely get it. I also said that I too have used my illnesses as reasons why I can’t/won’t do something which is probably why this question didn’t offend me as much as it did others. I can only be honest with myself and others here and there have been time when I have completely understood how I frustrated others with my actions. My father and my boyfriend are absolute saints.

I am not disagreeing with @Zuma when it comes to the issues that mental health deals us and the things it often makes us do but I do not appreciate being called holier than thou or self righteous just because I don’t automatically take offense to this question and find certain things, like theft, unnacceptable especially as, despite how her actions made us feel, we were nothing but accepting and understanding towards her until the day she left. How does that make me self righteous? .

@Zuma Per “I have had kids in the class room who refuse to even TRY to control their disruptive behavior, using the excuse “I CAN’T! My mom says I’m ADHD! She says I can’t control myself!” They don’t even try.” Oh really? Are these actual facts? Or are these perceptions filtered through the lens of self-righteous moralizing?

Yes. Actual facts. Really happens. I’m a teacher.

@Val123 That’s really sad. I think the parents are not doing their children any favours if they are putting the idea into their childrens heads that, because they are ADHD, they are limited in what they can do compared to other children. They are deciding for the children rather than letting the children decide for themselves therefore giving up on their children and, even worse, allowing their children to give up on themselves.

Now that we’ve all become sensitized to one another’s issues, let me apologize for being so personally accusative. Let’s see if we can re-pose this question in more constructive and less judgmental terms.

Mental illness, almost by definition, seems to compromise a person’s ability to take responsibility. People often become overwhelmed, depressed and demoralized by their diagnoses, and for good reason. The diagnosis can become a stigma, a stamp that marks one as a “social reject” and consigns one to a life apart from “normal” people. Quite often the help that is available is not very helpful. In fact, it can come at a heavy price (as in medication side effects), or it can be an outright betrayal, when people use your diagnosis to undermine you, stereotype you, or otherwise invalidate your sense of what is best for you.

Quite often, in order to be considered for a job at all, you have to lie about the nature and severity of your condition. As a consequence, people expect you to be better than you are. In addition, you have to contend with judgmental bystanders who are convinced that you are either faking, not trying as hard as you can, or are “milking” your diagnosis—and, on some days you are, because some days are better than others. If you always try as hard as you can, people soon expect you to behave that way all the time, and they get really upset when you have a string of bad days and really need a certain amount of slack.

Certainly some behavior, like theft, is so socially disruptive that it cannot be tolerated; but other behavior, like tardiness or failing to show up are merely annoying. It’s simply bad for morale to let some people come in late while others get to come in whenever they can make it. To what extent are you enabling people’s illnesses when you tolerate these behaviors, and to what extent are you passing moral judgments about people you have no professional relationship with and, therefore, no business making?

Certainly we could all “try harder” than we do. But, when you are demoralized, urging a mentally ill person to “take responsibility” is like telling a depressed person to “cheer up.” It can be kind of cruel unless it is done with tact and in the right spirit. So, how can we help people whose ability to take responsibility is compromised in a way that is effective and non-judgemental?

@Zuma I agree with everything you have said above and I thank you for your apology.

The one thing I have learnt from my own issues is that we are all (regardless of whether we are ill or not) human and it’s human nature to sometimes get annoyed or frustrated when we feel someone isn’t pulling their weight in some way or another and it has a negative effect on other people. I am always scared about what my state of mind is doing to those around me and there have been times when I have seen my partner’s frustration with me even though he is trying his best to be understanding the man deserves a medal for his patience. He wants to help me but sometimes he feels I am being unreasonable and can I blame him when I know full well I am being unreasonable?

It’s very easy to say that everyone needs to be more understanding towards those of us with mental health problems but that is sometimes easier said than done (hell, if I can’t understand me how is anyone else going to?!?!) and quite often if you are having a bad time yourself you don’t always want to be understanding. Yes, this is selfish but it is also human nature.

I think we need to be more understanding to everyone because we all know that mental health doesn’t usually only affect those with the diagnosis.

@Zuma Why would anyone try discussing anything with you when all you do is twist words and try to make what anyone is saying into something that you can attack them for? That is not discussion, that is ranting on your part that is largely unjustified. You choose to see things one way and steadfastly refuse to see them as anything other than what you have already decided they are, even when things are clarified and your deliberate misinterpretations are countered. If you’re not capable of having a civil discourse, even when “trying,” why would anyone bother responding to you? I could sit here and counter everything you’ve said, but you’ve already decided what my response would be and wouldn’t actually read it. Why bother?

I’m not sure what behaviors that some people in this thread are trying to justify to themselves by calling me a horrible person incapable of comprehending things that I comprehend quite well. I understand that its easier to try and shove blame off on me by calling me names and what have you than actually face things that you don’t wish to. I understand that its easier to blow up at me with a self-righteous rant than to deal with whatever’s going on in your life that you’re really angry about. I understand that its easier to accuse me of having no idea about something without bothering to ask about, or try to understand, the knowledge and experience I do have than to when trying to comprehend my point might mean that I actually have a valid point. I understand that its easier to try and put my past actions under a microscope instead of your own. Whatever. But I’m not going to sit here and beat my head against the wall of deliberate and malicious incomprehension. I’ve made my point and those who are not so wrapped up in what they want to believe have seen the validity. I refuse to sit here and counter points in an unfounded rant which will only engender another unfounded rant based on things that are not actually said or meant with the assumption, for whatever reason, of the worst possible intentions. Type away, but anyone reading this thread will see it for what it really is rather than what you want them to see. Have a happy new year.

Many thanks to all of you who made the attempt to try and understand what the actual subject of this question was and those who attempted to clarify that for others.

Damn. I was reading these new posts, and was so pleased that both sides were able to bring this around to an amicable end. I had all the happy fuzzies going on, then the wound was ripped open unecessarily at the end. Unbelievable. Thanks for the attempts to straighten it out, those who worked so hard on this. This site benefits greatly by those kinds of efforts.

@avvooooooo My apology extends to you as well.

@Zuma Insincere at best.

@avvooooooo Why kick a supplicant in the teeth?

There really is no way for me to directly address the comments immediately above without seeming to go back on my apology and my implicit promise to dial back the personal and critical tenor of the discussion so far; so let me just reiterate my suggestion above to recast the question in more constructive terms:

“Mental illness, almost by definition, seems to compromise a person’s ability to take responsibility. People often become overwhelmed, depressed and demoralized by their diagnoses, and for good reason. The diagnosis can become a stigma, a stamp that marks one as a “social reject” and consigns one to a life apart from “normal” people. Quite often the help that is available is not very helpful. In fact, it can come at a heavy price (as in medication side effects), or it can be an outright betrayal, when people use your diagnosis to undermine you, stereotype you, or otherwise invalidate your sense of what is best for you.”

“Quite often, in order to be considered for a job at all, you have to lie about the nature and severity of your condition. As a consequence, people expect you to be better than you are. In addition, you have to contend with judgmental bystanders who are convinced that you are either faking, not trying as hard as you can, or are “milking” your diagnosis—and, on some days you are, because some days are better than others. If you always try as hard as you can, people soon expect you to behave that way all the time, and they get really upset when you have a string of bad days and really need a certain amount of slack.”

“Certainly some behavior, like theft, is so socially disruptive that it cannot be tolerated; but other behavior, like tardiness or failing to show up are merely annoying. It’s simply bad for morale to let some people come in late while others get to come in whenever they can make it. To what extent are you enabling people’s illnesses when you tolerate these behaviors, and to what extent are you passing moral judgments about people you have no professional relationship with and, therefore, no business making?”

“Certainly we could all “try harder” than we do. But, when you are demoralized, urging a mentally ill person to “take responsibility” is like telling a depressed person to “cheer up.” It can be kind of cruel unless it is done with tact and in the right spirit. So, how can we help people whose ability to take responsibility is compromised in a way that is effective and non-judgemental?”

This discussion caused me to reflect on the dynamic between me and my wife. I had been sick for a couple of years, and had gotten a lot better, when she started to get depressed. She said, “I’ve been taking care of you for a while, and not it’s my turn to be depressed.” Later on, she would say things like “It’s a good thing that we weren’t depressed at the same time.

When I heard these things, I thought that she was right, and I needed to do my part to care for her. But after this discussion, I wonder if some of this lack of understanding of the nature of mental illness is creeping in. The implication of her statement is that, to some degree, depression is voluntary. She would not let herself go until I was better, and (implicit threat) I had better not get depressed while she was feeling down. The implicit assumption is that I was controlling my depression and not being responsible for it when I let it go.

The impact of it is that I do feel a pressure to hide my depression. Certainly I did that before, and I always soldiered on through, believing the whole thing was under my control. When things got worse and worse, my shrink and my wife would tell me it was out of my control, but it never felt that way to me, and so I would spiral down in a cycle of failure to control and self-blame for failing to control,

Right now, I’m uncertain of what is going on. I feel bad, but I don’t know if that’s situational, or something more perilous. I’m trying not to show it, though. She’s depressed, so I can’t show it. After all, it’s my turn to take care of her.

Responsibility can be a great burden. I can’t afford to drop the ball here. I’ve got children and a big event coming up at work, and a depressed wife. I’ve got a mind that is thinking all kinds of novel thoughts (not like manic thinking, though). I’ve got worries and questions for myself, and I have to shove all that aside so I can do what I have to do. I think some people would break, but I’m not going to. At least, not on the outside.

I do believe that people’s behavior are a good reflection of their character. Thanks to those of you who seek to calm things down.

By calling excessive drinking alcoholism, we absolve the “victims” of any responsibility for improving their choices and behaviors. Thus, we enable them to continue their destructive behaviors with a socially acceptable excuse.

See Herbert Fingarette’s “Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease” for a clear explication of the phenomenon. Stanton Peele’s addiction website is another good resource as is the Baldwin Research Institute. http://www.baldwinresearch.com/