MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: They need make a new prison.

> I see your point on this. People be willing to get help? That the problem.

It is a problem, one with multiple causes. When people are willing to get help, they often can't get the help that they need. And when they do manage to get help, the stigma of having a mental illness follows them around for the rest of their lives, because people are largely ignorant about neurological disorders and mental illness.

People with schizophrenia are often put into a very precarious life situation due to the stigma attached to having a mental disorder. Schizophrenia is completely controllable through medication and therapy, but few businesses are willing to take what they perceive to be a risk - even if there isn't one - on someone who admits to having such a disorder. Thus these people are often relegated to menial jobs, putting them at risk of being unable to afford their medication, which in turn increases the risk of them going off-medication and having a relapse, which in turn reinforces peoples' suspicions of those with schizophrenia.

People with Tourette's syndrome are highly stigmatized in society. Their physical or verbal tics can take almost any form, from a teacher I once had who would click her teeth together, to a shoulder twitching, to making a soft noise every so often, to neck twitching, and so on. Yet all of the portrayals of Tourette's in the media make it seem like the only tic is constant swearing, even though coprolalia is an exceedingly rare symptom to have.

Don't even get me started on obsessive-compulsive disorder, as so many people love to joke about "Oh, I'm so OCD," when if you ask any person who has OCD, it's not a fun or pleasant thing to have at all.

So it's sort of a social catch-22 when it comes to mental disorders. Those who want help can't get it, those who get help are ostracized from society, and so people often avoid getting help for fear of it ruining their lives even more. Combine that with severe limitations on the state's ability to institutionalize people, and you wind up with an enormous social pressure cooker of people walking around just a hair trigger away from "going off". It's sad.