Michele Gyselinck

 Abortion is pertinent inasmuch as it is the abortion of children with disabilities such as Down's Syndrome, for example, since a lot of couples will decide to abort a pregnancy when they know that the baby to be born is likely to have the disability.  In fact, some tests such as the one--can't think of the term--where the pregnant mother has some amniotic fluid drawn through a siringe and this liquid is then taken to the nearest lab taped to her body to be kept at body temperature with the purpose of determining whether the fetus has DS or not, so she and her partner can then decide to terminate the pregnancy or not.  I have heard that there are new procedures to make that diagnosis now that are less invasive such as a blood test.

I'm not sure if I commented on this post already or not, but to me point 3 falls in the duh! category.  The medications exist because they were found to meet a need, and while I can see that some depressions could be managed without medication, nobody could do that with major mental illnesses like schizophrenia unless they're anti-psychiatry but that's another horse.  And even depressions nowadays are not what they used to be.  In a program I saw on TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin during Mental Health Week a few years ago, three psychiatrists were saying that depression in many cases had become a chronic illness, so even there it might be unrealistic to expect people to get over it on their own strength, so what's the big problem with church members taking meds for mental illnesses? Is it yet another preconceived idea based on an assumption that mental illnesses are moral failures on the part of those who suffer from these illnesses?  Welcome to the 21st Century. 

Man, I'm tired of seeing those old prejudices having to be re-addressed time and time again.  Can we move on to the next level in helping people with mental illnesses than repeating the same arguments?  In Hebrews, when the author wrote to the congregation about their maturity level, he said that although by that time they should have been teaching others they still needed to be taught the basics, and you know why? Because people who don't grow in the faith don't do their homework, and it's the same about ministering to people in the church that have special needs.  Some Christians should know better than to still be stuck at the level of changing their attitude toward other Christians with mental illnesses, but we're going around in circles because those who still need posts like the one above are not growing.  This should be a non-issue for followers of Christ Who never bothered to consider if people who were sick and needed His help were deserving of it.  Who in the Church of Christ is deluded enough to think they have the right to judge other believers because they're mentally ill?

The impression I get from the excerpts of The Disabled God is that Jesus' stigmata somehow still affect His ability to use His hands and feet as though He were limping along or would have difficulty using His hands to open a jar or drive a nail through a plank of wood.  Yet He doesn't seem to have had any difficulty breaking the bread when He was having dinner with the two disciples at Emmaus.  So,if Christ's scars don't impede His functioning after His resurrection, in what way is He disabled?

 Well, for my part I sure hope not.  I can't wait to be rid of my schizophrenia.  It's been hell for me, and I don't refer to myself as being schizophrenic.  If some people identify with their disability to such an extent that they can't visualize life in the New Jerusalem without it, that's their problem, but I WANT OUT.  

 My maternal grandfather developed senile dementia in his last years, mostly from age 87 to 90 when he passed away in 1984, and when I went to see him with my mom he seemed only a ghost of the man I'd known as a child and young adult when he taught me how to make his liver pâté, so we began our mourning process long before he breathed his last.  I wasn't there on that day, but my mom and dad were.  I'm sorry that you're losing your mother that way.  Mine, however, is still "all there" on the verge of her 89th birthday, which will be on January 31st.  She even drives her car still and got a new one last spring.  She's also planning on moving to a larger apartment in her seniors' residence in March that will be closer to the elevator to make it easier because some of the medications she takes for her heart condition make her dizzy and the hallways are long there.  But it IS a seniors' residence and NOT a nursing home.  And it doesn't smell like a nursing home.  

Sorry that the contrast between my mom and yours is so stark, but I'd rather have my mom the way she is than with senile dementia any day, and I imagine you'd prefer it this way too.

  While reading the other comments I was reminded that the word from which we get words like psychology, psychiatry etc. is [psyche].  Please forgive me for not putting it in International Phonetic Alphabet ; I don,t have the characters on hand.  Psychiatry and psychology claim to treat the mind, but the medications also treat the soul to some extent since antipsychotics and antidepressants control the symptoms that make mentally ill people often miserable enough to consider suicide, when they don't actually take measures to end their own lives.  Since depression was my dominant  negative symptom, finding a medication that alleviated that emotional problem helped me to move on from self-obsession to being able to help others AND to want to.  I wish you luck in trying to diagnose moral illness in a society that has pretty much lost its own moral compass to begin with.  I disagree with Rev. Nederhood that abortion is the cause of people choosing to kill children.  In my opinion, it is merely a symptom among others.

 Hi Mark, 

 It must have been very hard to have to make a decision like that on your mom's behalf, and I think you took a load of guilt on yourselves that was unnecessary.  I'm glad that your aunt could comfort you about the decision you made, so you could lay the guilt aside.  Is your mom still alive?

 I think Pat Robertson is a poor excuse for a Christian.  He and others like Jerry Falwell Jr. endorsed Donald J. Trump during the past campaign because he had promised to reverse Roe v. Wade and other decisions on gay marriage.  As if Christianity were ONLY about abortion or homosexuals.  Actually, those issues are often the hobby horses of some preachers with a limited understanding of the Gospel, but a disproportionate salary.  In one of his programs the comedian John Oliver discussed the obscene salaries and lifestyles of some of those preachers who pressure people in their congregations and online to give them money and God would bless the people with wealth and health, and often the people who give money to those preachers have a hard time making ends meet.  

I'm glad you can trust your wife's character if you should ever need her care, Mark, though I hope it won't be necessary.  I think you have enough of a burden taking care of your daughter without adding dementia as well.

 "But I wonder if it’s possible to take that approach too far? Do I convey the attitude that living with a disability is really no big deal? Or, worse, do I give the impression that it’s some sort of heroic existence deserving special admiration?"  

"But let’s be careful not to use that sort of language to dismiss or romanticize the difficulties faced by those with additional impairments. There’s nothing gallant about everyday life with a significant disability."

At first, when I read that I wondered if the author was into ableism or if my blog about the Chronically Normal was the appropriate response.  M disability doesn't make me use a wheelchair to get around or crutches.  In fact, most people who look at me briefly would probably not know I have a disability since it is invisible to the naked eye--unless they see me talking to someone they can't see.  Of course, nowadays with cell phones the fact that someone is talking to someone you can't see doesn't automatically lead people to conclude you're odd, since they would not necessarily see the phone, or that thing that some people have in their ear. from where they sit on the bus.  

But as I got off a bus once in a while I've had people look at me as though I were from Mars or something.  

These days I have bigger problems with side effects from medications than the symptoms of the illness itself.  If I don't get to sleep at a certain time the sedative carries over into the next day.  If I have to get up early for some reason I don't get enough sleep and become testy and impatient.  I also feel I tend to pass gas a lot more lately.  

  Hmmmmmmm.  I'm NOT ready to say that.  Maybe he is a goner but he's caused enough trauma in my life that I'm VERY reticent to challenge him to do more.  If you think you can handle it, more power to you, but I don't.  I'm fighting off a bronchitis right now that developed following the conference in Niagara Falls, and although I'm not coughing too much so far today I did a lot earlier this week, especially on Monday when I went to a walk-in clinic and waited for six hours on a little chair while coughing my lungs off, and the doctor didn't even prescribe antibiotics.  He prescribed pumps and stuff to clear my sinuses and told me to go back if things didn't improve.  

But last night at my mom's place my sister said that when she went to that clinic with a broken wrist the doctor did not prescribe X-Rays, and when they did the radiologist did not see the fracture, so they had her do physiotherapy on a broken wrist, and she could not sleep at night because of the pain.  She thought she was a wimp because they kept saying there was no fracture.  When the fracture was finally diagnosed at a teaching hospital they had to operate her and put screws and metal plates in, and now her movement with that wrist is restricted because of the incompetence at that clinic.

 So this morning I called my doctor's office for an appointment and got one for Monday morning.  If you would pray that I could make it without having to go to a walk-in clinic again, I'd appreciate it.  I didn't enjoy the experience.

 Even trying to get help for an adult family member who is psychotic and paranoid and refuses that their psychiatrist inform the family is difficult.  As soon as the patient is 18 or over they are considered able to decide for themselves, even if they obviously aren't.  A cousin of mine who was suffering from paranoid psychosis would not cooperate with her treatment plan as proposed by her doctor, and seeing signs in tree branches that her landlords wanted to kill her, she broke her lease every three months and moved before they'd have time to carry out their somber plans.  Eventually, she killed the one child she'd ever had by drowning the girl in the bathtub after drugging her so the kid would not resist.  And then she tried to kill herself by throwing herself in the nearest river.  (Montreal is an island located between two rivers.  The Rivière des Prairies on the north side and the St.Lawrence on the south.)  When she didn't drown fast enough to her taste, she got out of the water and walked to the nearest house where she was arrested after she'd told the owners her story and they called the police.  After that she fired one lawyer after another as soon as they suggested she get treated for her obvious disorder, because she wasn't aware of being ill.  Psychosis will pull that trick on people. Not all people with psychotic disorders have what is referred to as anosognosia, a term borrowed from neurology to describe the sequels suffered by some stroke victims where they are not aware of having lost abilities, but it is believed that 50% of people with schizophrenia and other forms of psychoses are afflicted in this way.  If it can comfort their close relatives and caregivers, they don't refuse to cooperate just to aggravate you.  In those cases they really don't believe they're ill.

Anyway, at her trial, the Crown prosecutor recommended she be sent to the Philippe Pinel Institute, a prison for the criminally insane, but she refused and ended up in a regular federal penitentiary for women, where she ultimately died by killing herself after three failed attempts.  

Fortunately, not all psychiatric patients suffer such tragic fates.  I am one of the fortunate few who had the symptoms hard enough to know what I'm talking about yet mild enough to be able to talk about the experience.  Some of those who know they're ill are just too severely afflicted to be able to talk about their illness in a cogent manner, or they started being ill at such a young age that it prevented them from getting an education because their symptoms interfered with concentration.  I know from personal experience how ineffective studying for a test can be when you haven't slept a full night in weeks and you're hearing voices.  It doesn't work. I'm writing this so that those who feel frustrated by trying to help mentally ill people and don't get any cooperation from the system will know that they are not the problem.  A system that considers adult people with mental illnesses in a psychotic state as competent to decide whether they need help or not, and entitled to have their privacy respected when they obviously need outside intervention is the problem.  Our system of individual rights was not designed for such patients.