Not many people saw this when I last posted it, so Ill try again and hope more see it. This can be found in the notes section. ~Tam Why the name mental illness needs to be changed. June 9, 2013 at 6:05pm Why the name change? First of all you need to understand that only the psychiatrists can officially change the name. This would be a vote with the APA, American Psychiatrists Association. Then this would go on to the AMA, American Medical Association. Then the name would be changed for the USA. This is a long and slow process. According to my psychiatrist, the APA has been thinking about changing the name for about 20 years or so, but they can’t agree on a name. The name that is thrown about the most is Neurosynaptic Dysfunction. This is why I have chosen this name. The NIMH, National Institute of Mental Health has picked“Brain Disorders” for psychiatric disorders. This would lump mental illnesses with many other disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease. A list of different brain disorders can be found at brainfoundation.org.au/medical-info/a-z-of-disorders#P. Granted this is not a bad idea, but again it goes back to the psychiatrists to officially change the name and they may choose that. Now, why must the name be changed? Mental Illness describes a symptom; it is not what is wrong with us. In brains, there are neurotransmitters that transmit signals and chemicals through the synapses of the brain; this is where the problem lies. You can see a picture of this at the bottom of the page. Since the problem in our brains is a neurological biochemical glitch, we deserve to have a medical term for our illness. All other disease have a medical term, yet we are stuck with what the glitch causes, mental problems. Everyone knows that there is stigma surrounding mental illness. I think, at least in my case,the biggest stigma came from me. I felt less than human, a reject that couldn’t do anything, inadequate, crazy,demented, and many other terms. Now that I understand that I have a medical illness, not a mental one, that stigma is gone. Of course, those feelings came from the stigma that the populace has about mental illness. With many recent events of gun slayings from people that had untreated mental problems, the stigma surrounding us has grown. This must stop. With a few exceptions we are not violent people; we are people that have a neurosynaptic glitch in our brains. Our brains just don’t function properly, a dysfunction of the brain, a neurosynaptic dysfunction. The general public just doesn’t understand this. I believe that by changing the name to a medical term, the public will have a better understanding of us and we will understand ourselves better. The stigma should diminish and hopefully after time, disappear altogether. Studies have been done that show the opposite with schizophrenia. The populace was told that people with schizophrenia had a biological problem in their brains that cause the disease. However, the populace still had the understanding that these people had mental illness. They were not told that the mental illness was just a symptom of the brain dysfunction. I strongly believe that if the public was told that schizophrenia is just a symptom of an underlying neurosynaptic dysfunction and the word“mental” was never mentioned, these studies would have ended differently. The word “mental” must be eradicated from our brain dysfunction. There is too much stigma surrounding the word. I am a person not a mental illness. That is why the name must be changed.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 20:30:23 +0000
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