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The love ethic of mental illness

  
 
LucasCorso
10:02 / 10.08.05
I recently read as essai by Thomas Szasz, founder of anti-psychiatric movement, and it left me disappointed.
It seems for this guy the whole problem can be reduced to the attitude that you use toward people with mental illnesses: they have not a problem, is just you that don't understand them. I think that's very irresponsible.

My actual girlfriend has some form of subtle schizophrenia. She leads a 'normal' life for 80% of her time, even if some subtle-layered signs (for example in the way she speaks) can be well traced if you know of her illness.

Then there are crisis, which happens especially at night: she has nightamres, she wakes up and she sees people who does'nt exist, hear voices, and the whole stuff.
In our first times together I found something strange in her, but did'nt suspected anything, until she decided to reveal me.

Back in years she had serious problems, which have been a bit reduced with the help of a good psychiatrist: she used to be convinced that her dead boyfriend was still alive and that he was going to catch her and she had a whole bunch of imaginary friends. When she explained me I was freezed, but tried to keep on normally; since then she had some crisis while she was with me and I tried to help her, though it's very hard.

So now here are the questions: how to deal with people with serious mental ilnesses? Do you have some special care, if you know any, when you are with them? And what about a love relationship with one of them: you would or would'nt do things that should do otherwise if your lover was'nt so "special"? And what about sex? Assuming that the other person is absolutely conscient and aware, would'nt you had the same some regret in making love with her/him?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
10:14 / 04.09.05
So now here are the questions: how to deal with people with serious mental ilnesses? Do you have some special care, if you know any, when you are with them?

When you say "how to deal with people with mental illnesses", I assume you mean on a social level.

Special care? Well, I think you should try to make yourself aware of the situation the mentally ill person is in, as with any relationship with any person: you can't ignore the factors in somebody else's life that are affecting them if you truly want to know them.

This "awareness" doesn't neccesarily mean that you need to be an expert on whatever illness they suffer from, that is for doctors and other proffessionals- but I think it would be dangerous to know nothing about how the illness might manifest itself or what triggers it.

It's about balance. It's important to separate the "friend" from the "doctor"- as a teenager, I knew one or two kids who had Down's Syndrome, who just wanted a friend they could go down the pub or round town with. They wanted someone to be friends with them, not their disability.

Unfortunately people would polarise, either being absolutely horrible and agressive towards them, or trying to treat them like children- neither of which truly constitutes friendship in the adult sense.

And what about a love relationship with one of them: you would or would'nt do things that should do otherwise if your lover was'nt so "special"?

One has to ask: is there actually a single set of actions you take regarding any given lover? Would you do the same things with every girlfriend/boyfriend, whoever they were? Do you take all your lovers to watch the same film, or eat at the same restaraunt?

What I'm getting at is that actually there is no "average" mentally healthy person nor is there an "average" mentally ill person: mental illness should be seen as part of the person's life, not the whole of it: for example, if someone had been brought up in a mental institution (horrible word) you might be more wary when talking about your family so as not to upset them. However, you might also take this same tactic with someone who had been adopted, if you see what I mean?

The point is that everyone has something to deal with in their life and needs to be approached as an individual.

And what about sex? Assuming that the other person is absolutely conscient and aware, would'nt you had the same some regret in making love with her/him?

"Making love"- showing love- does not neccesarily mean sex.
 
 
Rage
05:33 / 08.09.05
The mentally ill are just magicians who don't have control over their delusions, no?

How do you deal with someone who thinks they're a godform?
 
 
Jub
07:11 / 08.09.05
The mentally ill are just magicians who don't have control over their delusions

Was going to try and come up with some subtle, engaging argument about this, but felt that would rather be like a Darwinist entertaining a Creationist. Isn't the above sort of comment supposed to be confined to the Temple?
 
 
Rage
07:33 / 08.09.05
I'm just trying to figure out the difference between dealing with someone who thinks they're Jesus and dealing with someone who thinks they're Thor.
 
 
Jub
08:47 / 08.09.05
If anyone thought they were Jesus or Thor, an argument could be advanced that they were suffering with a form of mental illness. This would have nothing to do with them being a magician though - nor would it have anything to do with this thread.
 
 
Quantum
09:18 / 08.09.05
I feel loving someone with mental illness would be a bit like loving someone with any serious illness- a dependency relationship. There's also a big difference between your husband or wife of fifty years contracting Alzheimers, and falling for someone kooky because they speak to imaginary people. While I'm all for the rights of the mentally ill including their right to have a relationship, I'm dubious of the ethics of forming a relationship with someone while they have diminished responsibility.

(No, a schizophrenic/MPD sufferer/delusional person is not a magician. Come to the Temple and I will explain why in excruciating detail if you like, this is the Headshop.)
 
 
Rage
09:33 / 08.09.05
How do you live with someone who performs divinations?

If you can deal with some hippie goddess from the planet of Felulu you can deal with some dude who is receiving secret messages from the televison.
 
 
Quantum
10:56 / 08.09.05
Again I say, see you in the Temple. I'm a professional fortune teller, but also coherent. Kerayzee.

If the relationship is just helping to remember to take medication to suppress schizophrenia, say, then it's not really different to having a diabetic partner. However, if your SO can't make everyday decisions it casts doubt on the veracity of (and possily motives behind) your relationship. There's a danger of taking advantage of another person which IMHO is ethically questionable.

Many people are a bit weird, and live a normal-ish romantic life. I think this is really about Pathological behavioural problems, a different issue. Can you be said to have a workable relationship with someone with severe symptoms?
 
 
Ganesh
12:49 / 08.09.05
If the relationship is just helping to remember to take medication to suppress schizophrenia, say, then it's not really different to having a diabetic partner.

Except for the differences in societal stigma.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:16 / 08.09.05
I feel loving someone with mental illness would be a bit like loving someone with any serious illness- a dependency relationship. There's also a big difference between your husband or wife of fifty years contracting Alzheimers, and falling for someone kooky because they speak to imaginary people. While I'm all for the rights of the mentally ill including their right to have a relationship, I'm dubious of the ethics of forming a relationship with someone while they have diminished responsibility.

Hmm. But is anyone talking about 'falling for someone kooky because they speak to imaginary people'? Or talking about falling for people, a part of whose make-up is a mental illness.

I guess I'm sensing, and I may be wrong, a consideration of adults with mental illness in 'childish' terms, describing them as a dependent, suggesting an inappropriateness about getting into relationships.

Which I'm very dubious about in my turn. Mentally ill adults are just that.

There's a vast spectrum of mental illness and the extent to which this illness diminishes responsibility. So there's no one answer.

(and this ain't really my area but there's an awful lot of woolly definition in this thread.)
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:22 / 08.09.05
Oh, and just reread Legba's post. *applauds*

I'm in no way saying that it's all wine and roses (having been on both sides of relationships involving someone with severe depression, it ain't.) but I'm a bit concerned about some of the language in the above quote.

On a practical note, if you're in a large city, there are often resources for partners of people with various serious/ongoing conditions, physical and mental.

Remember that, as with all serious issues in relationship territory, if you're feeling exhausted/always the one 'in charge', that isn't constructive either(I'm not saying that you're saying this, just making a general point) for you or your relationship.

Getting support for yourself is also important. This can be friends, familiy, others in simillar positions.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:44 / 08.09.05
Indeed. I think:

I feel loving someone with mental illness would be a bit like loving someone with any serious illness- a dependency relationship.

Misrepresents both situations. Certainly, a relationship with anyone with a serious illness may involve having to take that illness into account and at times amy necessitate taking care of them, but that isn't necessarily a dependency relationship, is it? Certainly it might be susceptible to be oriented towards dependency, but then many relationships are, which is also part of the problem with defining "mental illness" in these terms. If you feel that somebody is not able to make decisions about their feelings, or that they have mental illnesses that would make it impossible for them to have an equal (sexual/romantic) relationship with a partner, that's one thing, but that's one end of a scale, surely?
 
 
Quantum
16:53 / 08.09.05
To clarify- yes, that's one end of the scale, and that's really the situation I was assuming (ass, you, me, I know).
*IF* one partner is severely impaired then that ethical worry comes up, the more complex issues arise concerning the differing levels of impact, where my points are much less applicable.

I'm certainly not tarring all people with mental illness as having diminished responsibility and the emotional maturity of children, nor did I mean to patronise anyone. But if I was experiencing a psychotic episode for example, I might act differently in choosing partners and my interaction with them, and after the episode might feel differently. While someone with emotional problems or mental illness can certainly have a romantic life just as stormy or happy as anyone else, I start to feel protective of those with very affecting illnesses, especially if they're biological in origin like schizophrenia (which the partner in the original post is affected by I believe).

When I was equating schizophrenia with diabetes I was deliberately ignoring the social stigma as part of a long-term effort to undermine that stigma. Perhaps I should have put IMO after that, I'm certainly aware of it.
 
 
alas
11:43 / 09.09.05
My sister has schizo affective disorder, and has had, in her past, a series of really messed up relationships with men. It's hard to sit on the sidelines and watch any adult make very painful, bad--for her, hauntingly so--decisions. She's very beautiful, and when she was young was, in fact, stunningly beautiful. I don't blame the men completely, they were often kinda messed up in their own ways, but none was able to deal with her illness.

My advice re: sex (and I'm under the impression this is hetero-sex we're talking about, in the main case). Use contraception religiously. This is not a eugenics concern, but a child-care concern.
 
 
Dot the Narc...Oleptic, That Is
00:15 / 14.09.05
As I don't have a mental illness, but rather a neurological one, my comments may seem irrelevant, but I have had the experience of of affecting a relationship with my condition.
I have Narcolepsy and as a result I experience cataplexy, automatic behavior, sleep paralysis, microsleeps, and hypnagogic hallucinations. I want to share with you the last of my symptoms. Lucid dreaming is an amazing and torturous thing to experience, more for my boyfriend than for me. He deals with "real" nightmares, unconscious conversations, and everyone's favorite, my swearing to an event that never occured. As this partner is a keeper, I can compare his strategy to past partners. It's very difficult to deal with me because the medication I take is for the waking hours only. I won't take the medication suggested to improve my sleep because I don't want to take stuff to wake up and more stuff to fall asleep. As a result, anyone sleeing next to me is subject to my nocturnal behavior. Previous relationships often ended because of my hesitance to "sleep over" or as a result of all the bullshit I put hir through in the course of the night. Current boyfriend has been to medical appointments with me and understands much of my condition. I'm prohibited from driving more than a few hours and a few miles a day and I've been known to have some sociopathic tendancies as a result of my condition. I don't have any incapacitation mentally, so it is very different from someone with Down's Syndrome, but there are many social stigmas with my label.
If a person loves you, feels affection for you, and has the capacity to express themselves sexually in a responsible fashion, then their illness doesn't define your relationship. If your partner has a mental illness and you wish to be a part of ze's life, then I would advise you to be a part of ze's dealing with said illness. When it comes to a point when hir illness is a governing feature in everyday life then I would think that you would be crossing a line. I don't know if I could carry on a healthy relationship with a person who was not entirely aware of reality a majority of the time.
 
 
Quantum
10:04 / 14.09.05
Wow, thanks for that post dot- I agree, I think a partner has to be aware of and involved in a disorder for a relationship to really work, same with neurological disorders as with bodily disorders like Diabetes. Hopefully one day the stigma of behavioural disorders will have faded, and perception of them will be no different. But as you say, severe disorders where a person can't really function would make a romantic relationship almost impossible.
 
 
sdv (non-human)
18:32 / 14.09.05
Isn't love something that escapes from the psychiatric and even the analytical look ? I'd even go as far as to suggest that we might assume that love is something that is almost impossible to represent or present ? (i think of the dreadful attempts made in popular culture...) It's like Julia Kristeva and Nikolas Luhmann both suggest - 'love is the act of love' and in fact there is never a model, pre-existing or future-existing which can be applied to the specifics, the social or personal conditions are never quantifible. Which is to suggest that there may never be a position external to the event... This i suggest is a painfully modern process, and may not even exist prior to the 17th or 18th centuries...

the suggestion that has been made previously about dependencies, which is to suggest that to love a mentally ill person - is to (re)produce a master/slave relationship seems wrong. Indeed given that equivilence between men and women is comparatively new 50 to 75 years at the very most, and even now in most cultures, it's clear that it's not possible to imagine equality that easily... Consequently I'd suggest that there is no need to think of dependency in such general terms. Surely we could assume that love must surely generate equality... or not be love ?

Kristeva incidentally argues that only the depressed and the narcisist cannot love - because of the specifics of their emotional construction - I do not think she says anything about other conditions being incapable of love...
 
 
Unconditional Love
11:47 / 17.09.05
I work with a collegue who has been labelled schizophrenic so is her husband labelled that way. and no doubt there child will be if psychiatrists want to prove there theories.

They have no problems, except the usual that couples face in the modern world, they are in love.

Ive been out with partners some labelled in one way others with no psychiatric label at all, the relationships were different with different people.

It isnt an issue, unless you let somebody else dictate it as an issue for you, or society decides to stick its ugly head in because it needs to identify and catalogue you as an individual or couple.

They are just labels and its in the labels where the stigma lies, and the stigma is lying.

psychiatry is an industry, its relationship to mental illness is mutually dependent, and psychiatrists love creating dependency with the aid of pharmacology and other chemical warfare techniques upon its patients, who are running out of patience. Thankfully thou this situation is changing and survivors are aiding in the recovery, very soon it will be survivors teaching survival techniques, in fact they already are.

10 years from now there will be no psychiatrists.All across europe the hospitals are closing.

Love is beyond labels, yet should be in every one of them.
 
 
Quantum
12:57 / 17.09.05
Ah, where to start? 10 years from now there will be no psychiatrists Really? Who will proscribe all the Prozac? If there's still a demand for Psychiatrists (which seems likely) there'll still be a supply, surely? Perhaps you'd like to start another thread on it to support that crazy sounding statement?
 
 
Unconditional Love
13:25 / 17.09.05
As a survivor who has just returned from a mental health conference led and run by survivors for those in the industry and other survivors, perhaps i am being alittle over zealous, but if the mood and feel of that conference is anything to go by, i will stand by that claim. Things seem to be changing drastically.

Enough for some at the conference from the industry to emit palpable anxiety, about survivors aiding in recovery.
Not cure, but recovery. there is no cure, only a social sickness created through stigma and conformity.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
00:40 / 18.09.05
It isnt an issue, unless you let somebody else dictate it as an issue for you, or society decides to stick its ugly head in because it needs to identify and catalogue you as an individual or couple.

Of course it's an issue. Are you trying to tell me it doesn't effect a relationship when your partner stops taking their medication and is sectioned?

If someone you love is seriously ill and none of the drugs are working for them and their condition isn't under control then hell it's an issue because they could simply be dangerous. That's not minor and it's not simple societal pressure, it's real fear and people who are trying to control their problems and can't are consistently hospitalised. That can effect relationships in all kinds of ways and while it might not destroy a relationship it certainly is an issue that you have to deal with if that happens to your partner. You might also be rather relieved that society is there to stick it's ugly head in when you're desperately worried that someone is going to harm themself and you have to go to work in the morning.
 
 
Ganesh
09:07 / 18.09.05
10 years from now there will be no psychiatrists.All across europe the hospitals are closing.

Yesss... because (the increasing number of) community-based psychiatrists are using techniques you describe as "chemical warfare" to treat on an out-patient basis those who, before the advent of psychotropic medication, would've been confined to bedlams for the duration of their natural lives.

'Psychiatrist' does not = 'asylum keeper', y'know.
 
 
Ganesh
09:15 / 18.09.05
I work with a collegue who has been labelled schizophrenic so is her husband labelled that way. and no doubt there child will be if psychiatrists want to prove there theories.

Yes, because obviously any such diagnosis won't hinge on anything as prosaic as actual symptoms. Those eeevil psychiatrists will be there at the birth, standing there with a catcher's mitt and a tattoo needle, ready to catch and label the baby. And then they'll eat it, because that's what we do.

Point: less of the paper-thin heroes-and-villains generalising. Please.
 
 
Ganesh
10:30 / 18.09.05
How do you live with someone who performs divinations?

The question, surely, would be: how do you live with someone who is occasionally, often or always subject to involuntary "divinations" they have difficulty controlling, which they and/or others find distressing, and which can drastically distort their relationship with the world around them in unwelcome ways?

If you can deal with some hippie goddess from the planet of Felulu you can deal with some dude who is receiving secret messages from the televison.

Rather depends on the way in which either scenario impacts on the relationship, don't you think?

Same with the Jesus/Thor thing. The point is not which godform one supposes oneself to be; it's how that supposition changes one's way of relating to the world. That's the general issue here, as Legba has already articulated. There is no one-size-fits-all way of 'dealing with' a lover who has a mental illness, just as there's no one-size-fits-all way of 'dealing with' a lover period.
 
  
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