CONSUMER COLUMN What is Mental Illness?

By Dru Ann McCain, Yuma, Az, 3/94

The following article by a consumer appeared in YUMA, AZ AMI newsletter and was subsequently reprinted in AMI/FAMI newsletter which is edited by Aviva and Izzy Rice.

Mental illness is an attack on free will. Free will is defined as, Freedom of decision or of choice between alternatives. Free will is not a spiritual, metaphysical, or mystical event. It is the result of a biochemical process that takes place in the brain. The proof of that statement is in the observation of what mental illness does to the exercise of free will. Just as the various forms of cancer attack different cells at differing rates and to varying degrees, so do the various forms of mental illness attack free will in varying ways, rates, and degrees. Depression is an attack on the automaticness of free will.

A human being is faced with thousands of choices every day -- get out of bed, take a shower, brush your teeth, eat a meal, go to work, sign a letter, smile at your spouse and so on....... In a healthy individual 99% of these choices are so automatic one is unaware of making them, and thus is left with adequate energy to devote to the larger conscious choices. For a depressive, every choice is a conscious one and no less energy is required in deciding to brush one's teeth than for making a multi-million dollar decision. Since making one choice inevitably leads to the next, over time the depressive is so sapped of energy they may in effect choose not to even get out of bed because the prospect of all the choices that will follow is too overwhelming.

The biochemical process of free will is so slowed down that to the depressive it is like having to wade through hip deep mud every step you take. You can't get very far, very fast and eventually lose the strength to take one more step. In mania free will is accelerated. In a healthy individual adequate time is available to consider the pros and cons of a choice, its attendant rewards and responsibilities. For a manic, it becomes easy to make choices because thought of the consequences of oneis acts is passed over too quickly or altogether removed. The manic individual does more, each choice larger and more grandiose because of the godlike, omnipotent feeling created by the altered biochemistry.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder causes free will to get stuck. The healthy individual makes a choice and then automatically proceeds to the next. In the obsessive-compulsive, certain choices create a broken record effect causing the individual to make the same choice again and again and again. They may make the first choice to wash their hands, but the altered biochemistry causes them to get stuck within that choice unable to make the next choice which is to stop washing their hands.

In the case of schizophrenia the loss of free will is at times total. With disembodied voices directing the individual to act, free will is effectively destroyed. The biochemical process of free will is either shut down or so totally altered that the schizophrenic no longer has any control over thought or deed. Many people view the mentally ill as having flawed characters. In a sense, this is correct, because character is a result of free will, the cumulative result of the choices one makes. But free will is not a divine right. It is a biochemical process that in the mentally ill has been cruelly altered.

 

Dru Ann McCain successfully completed Suicide, July 5,1994.