6 myths about mental disorders that many still believe

1. People with mental disorders are aggressive and violent
2. People with mental disorders are very talented
3. People with mental disorders are stupid
4. People with dissociative personality disorder have many personalities that they change at the click of a button
5. All people with mental disorders are treated with electric shock and they turn into "vegetables"
6. Mental disorders are forever

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Popular films and books sometimes interfere with forgetting about stereotypes. But fiction is often far from reality.

1. People with mental disorders are aggressive and violent

If you are seen by a psychiatrist, it means that you must be a bloodthirsty maniac who strangles kittens, sacrifices children, rapes women. It is enough to watch a movie: on the screen, a person with a mental disorder often turns into an antihero, capable of torturing and killing.

To think so is not just a delusion, but a dangerous mistake that stigmatizes people with mental disorders, turns society against them, leads to bullying and discrimination, and makes them feel even worse.

In fact, there is no clear correlation between mental illness and cruelty. Aggression does occur among the symptoms of certain diseases, such as dissocial personality disorder. But in general, people with mental disorders do not commit more crimes than everyone else, at least if alcohol and drugs are not involved in the story.

And in general, the crime rate is associated not with the mental well-being of people, but with socio-economic factors. Moreover, people with mental disorders are more likely to become victims rather than criminals.

2. People with mental disorders are very talented

If they are not maniacs, then they must be geniuses. Like Raymond from Rain Man, who has a phenomenal memory and performs the most complex arithmetic operations in his mind. Or brilliant detectives: Agent Will Graham from "Hannibal" (he is credited with Asperger's syndrome), Detective Monk from the series of the same name (he has obsessive-compulsive disorder and phobias) and even Sherlock Holmes (he was not given any diagnoses, although nothing in the original story not mentioned).

Research does not support this theory. For example, when it comes to autism spectrum disorders, only 10% of people with autism are intellectually gifted.

As for other disorders, then everything is ambiguous with them. Obviously, there is some connection between mental characteristics and developed intelligence or creativity, but it is not clear whether it is direct or inverse. Most likely, people with high IQ and creative natures are more likely to suffer from mental disorders, and not vice versa.

3. People with mental disorders are stupid

They have very low intelligence, they are not able to analyze and memorize information in the same way as other people, they cannot study in schools and universities.

This antipode of the myth of genius is also not confirmed in practice. Experts say that some mental disorders are indeed accompanied by a decrease in intelligence, but in most patients it is completely intact and corresponds to normal indicators.

4. People with dissociative personality disorder have many personalities that they change at the click of a button

The novel “The Mysterious Story of Billy Milligan” and the thriller “Split” based on it, as well as the film “Sibylla” and other stories, in which the heroes famously switch from one identity to another, are partly to blame for this performance. True, even fictional characters do this not entirely at will, but these are already details.

Psychiatrists emphasize that in reality everything is different. There are not necessarily many personalities, and a person passes from one to another spontaneously, against his will, often in a state of stress.

Moreover, personalities do not always have very striking distinctive features. It all depends on the circumstances under which they arose: what kind of trauma the person suffered, how old he was, and so on. In general, different identities of the same person may well be similar to each other, so it will not be so easy to distinguish between them.

5. All people with mental disorders are treated with electric shock and they turn into "vegetables"

Everyone remembers scenes from films like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest": the hero was tied up, laid on the table, covered with electrodes and given a discharge. The hero screams and wriggles in pain, and then sits in the ward with a glazed, meaningless look.

Indeed, electroshock therapy was used in the past in punitive psychiatry in precisely this inhuman form. But all these nightmarish pictures are very far from what the method is today.

Modern electroconvulsive therapy is not torture or punishment. And, for example, a very effective treatment for "major" depressive disorder. It is used under conditions of anesthesia, it does not cause discomfort to the patient and leads to positive dynamics.

6. Mental disorders are forever

If you believe this tenacious stereotype, mental disorder cannot be cured. This is a sentence that condemns a person to imprisonment in the walls of a psychiatric clinic, taking pills and eternal suffering. Especially often this is talked about schizophrenia - a disorder that is generally surrounded by a huge number of myths and misconceptions.

But in reality, this is not the case at all. Although some mental disorders are indeed difficult and require long-term treatment, most patients can still achieve full recovery or go into long-term remission and have their symptoms subside. For example, 25% of people with schizophrenia make a full recovery, and another 50% make significant progress along the way.

Former patients lead full-fledged lives, receive education, and work. Some become psychotherapists, write books, give lectures and tell their stories of coping with the disease, for example, Professor Elin Sachs from the USA or the Norwegian writer and psychologist Arnhild Lauweng.