Listen to the full show of the This American Life episode #52 called Edge of Sanity. If you have a smartphone or tablet, the easiest way to listen to this, and all the other radio shows for the class, is to download the This American Life app. Once you have the app you can quickly find shows (by title or episode number) and listen right then and there. You can also go to the website www.thisamericanlife.org and search on episode number. I've found it for you here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/52/edge-of-sanity click on launch player and listen to the show.
What did you learn in this show about the distinctions between mental health and mental illness? Are these strict categories? Do people fluctuate in their mental health status?
This episode of This American Life was very enlightening, especially in the way of mental health institutions and those that inhabit them. Many people often believe mental health facilities to be these scary, pristine places full of crazy, savage people. I think this idea is perpetuated with cultural icons, such as Arkham Asylum from DC comics, a place that is quite literally filled to the brim with villainous insane people. This is not at all the case, as shown by the radio show I listened to this week. In reality, most mental health patients are just like non-mentally ill people; they create friendships and care about others. Surely, they have some odd behaviors, but so do many other people. The only distinction is whether those behaviors could potentially hurt someone. Mental health and mental illness have some distinctions. Mental health is more of a measure of someone’s mental well-being (and yes, mentally ill people generally have lower measures of mental health), while mental illness is more of an actual diagnosis, in which the person being diagnosed is afflicted with some type of disorder. There is, however, no distinct boundary between the two categories. Mental health and mental illness do have some correlations, of course, like mentally ill people generally having lower mental health, or are less mentally stable, but this is not always the case. Often, with the proper medication and treatment, people with psychological disorders behave just like everyone else. However, it is important to note, additionally, that many people who have no mental illnesses can have periods in which they are less mentally healthy. If one is going through a stressful time, grieving, or has suffered a huge disappointment, they can go through periods in which they retreat to a dark and solemn place. This indicative of a drop in mental stability, and everyone has had one of these episodes.
People do fluctuate in their mental health status, they can DEFINITELY get better with time and treatment, or they could possibly get worse. This is not to mention short term, day-to-day fluctuations in mood and health, both of which can impact mental health. There may be days where people with psychological disorders are near normal or are feeling very healthy, and there may be days where their mental health drops to a level that leads them to contemplate suicide, or they simply don’t feel that they can interact with their peers in a healthy manner. Personally, I always hold out the hope that everyone can improve their responses to mental illnesses. I have several friends who have mental illnesses, and if they had never told me, I would never know. They take their medicine, they have social lives, and they live happy and fulfilling lives. They have learned to cope with their mental illnesses, and this has influenced my belief that all people can overcome their struggles, with the right motivation.
mental health institutions
mental health patients
behavior
mental illness
treatment
psychological disorder
mental stability
fluctuations
healthy
motivation
As I was listening to this episode I found the information given extremely informative. I had never really considered what it must be like to live or work in a mental health institution before. This episode was very educational and gave me more of an understanding of what these people’s lives are like. One of the things that really grasped my attention was when Dr. Patricia Deegan helped Ira Glass understand what the voices she hears are really like. I have to admit, I was like Ira, in that I thought the voices were more like a weird version of your conscience. I had no idea it really seems like someone it talking out loud to you.
Along with this, this episode focused on the difference between mental health and mental illness. After listening to this episode, I think that mental health is more of the overall encasing of how a person is doing emotionally and psychologically where mental illness encompasses the diagnoses that patient with a troubled mental health receive as a consequence of their lower mental health. In this context, I would say that these categories are not strict by any means. What usually separates mental illness from non-mental illness is the threat of harm to the patient or other parties. This line is the only one that seems to be concrete. The human brain is so complicated and unique that to try to fit ourselves and our actions into concrete categories seems like an impossible and improbable task. This happens in so many different things but once again the lines between mental health and mental illness are just as grey as many issues dealt with today.
After listening to these stories, I found myself contemplating how many of these people really have had a positive increase in their mental health. I came to the conclusion that everyday each person goes through so many different emotions and behaves in so many different ways for so many different purposes that in a way the same is true for a person’s mental health status. A person’s mental health status depends on them and what their body is going through. Our mental health status might not fluctuate as readily as our moods but over time and given what life throws at us I believe that our mental health status can change. With this said, I think that it depends upon the person, the situation, and the brain in order to determine whether a person’s mental health can and will fluctuate.
As I continue to think through this episode it encourages me to see many of the people that shared be able to cope and change their circumstances along with their mental health status. For instance Dr. Patricia Deegan still hears voices however; she is able to cope with this using many different strategies that make her life better. She then continues to share these strategies with others so that they may change their mental status too, hopefully for the better. Each of the individuals that were interviewed in this episode had overcome or knew someone in treatment to increase their mental health. To me, this is great proof that as humans our mental health can fluctuate and can change.
Vocabulary: mental health, mental illness, mental health institution, emotion, psychology
The Edge of Sanity episode kind of confused me. I didn't enjoy it as much as the rest of the episodes we have listened to in the past. I felt like it was all over the place with no clear direction. I understand how all of the acts were related to each other but it didn't feel cohesive to me. I have to wonder if the producers did that on purpose to try and explain how an individual with mental illness lives, or if it was simply how they decided to piece the episode together. I did however, enjoy the fact that Susanna Kaysen read an excerpt from her book "Girl, Interrupted", because that was the book I chose for my book report.
From this jumbled up episode, I was still able to see the connection between mental health and mental illness. As we have learned throughout this class, an individual's mental health can increase or decrease over time depending on biological or environmental factors. During times of intense distress, we see a decrease in the mental health of people. This is a normal response to tragedy and does not mean that the person suffers a mental illness. It also does not mean that they will not develop said illness. The distinction is not concrete. Some individuals reach that level of disorder, and others do not. In this chapter of the textbook, it outlines some of the models that explain why this happens such as sociocultural, cognitive-behavioral, and others.
Mental illness is a clinical diagnosis made by healthcare professionals. A deteriorating mental health can lead to a mental illness. Mental illnesses are disorders that impact not only the individual, but also those that are around them. They disrupt normal daily living and functioning. This is different from poor mental health because usually in those without a mental disorder, their mental health will return to normal after a period of time. Their behaviors also generally do not have as great an impact on others as do those with mental disorders.
People with a mental illness are able to lead a relatively normal life though. They are not just found cooped up in a mental health institution. They walk around living their lives as best as possible just like everyone else. Often times, we don't realize if someone is living with one of these disorders because they have learned how to control it. With medication and various types of treatment, they may eventually recover or be able to at least cope and live with their disorder. In some cases, such as with Carol, their mental health statuses may fluctuate. One minute they may be seemingly healthy and normal, and the next minute they may be back to their "crazy" self. We need to realize that others could be dealing with these disorders and understand that it might be difficult for them. On the converse side, we should also stop labeling people because of their actions and behaviors when they may be simply struggling with a recent loss, not a mental disorder.
Vocabulary Terms: mental illness, mental health, biological factors, environmental factors, sociocultural model, cognitive-behavioral model, mental disorders, behaviors, mental health institution
What made me both sad and scared about this episode was the fact that the line between mental health and mental illness is so blurred. It really struck me how normal most of the people talked about in this episode can be. The Lisas in the first act made friends and competed with each other to be dinner, Doctor Patricia Deegan lives day to day with voices in her head, David Sedaris went about his normal life but had ticks that interrupted his daily routine, and Carol gave Joel Lovell advice about his brother. It amazed me how these people can go from seemingly normal activities to what we would call “crazy” or “mad” behaviors even in the course of a day. For instance, take Polly who set herself on fire but smiles and comforts people around her in the mental hospital or Carol who was able to comfort a staff member but wouldn’t even recognize his presence the next morning.
This really makes me believe in the fact that the difference between mental health and mental illness is truly a continuum that people can fall at any point between. Recognizing the gray area between these two states helps me to understand the struggles that people facing mental illnesses both minor and major as well as those who are responsible for caring for them face on a daily basis. Because there is no clear line between being mentally healthy and mentally ill, I imagine that it is very difficult for a person to recognize and come to terms with his or her mental illness and it would be even more difficult for a psychiatrist or even a family member to recognize when that person needs professional health. Additionally, I believe that people’s mental states fluctuate from week to week, day to day, or in some cases from hour to hour. While some people can overcome a depressive state in a short period, others stay in the depressive state for an extended period of time. It is very hard to define what behaviors and for how long these behaviors need to be expressed before you could categorize someone as “mentally ill.”
Throughout this episode it really struck me how difficult it must be for people with mental illnesses to live their day to day lives, especially because it seems that no one truly overcomes their mental illness completely. For instance, even though Doctor Patricia Deegan received treatment and now recognizes and accepts that she has schizophrenia, she still hears voices daily. After hearing the recording of what some of these voices sound like, I couldn’t imagine going through my daily routine with that in my head! Likewise, I thought about how intrusive it would be to have the ticks like David Sedaris. Although he points out that we all have ticks like fixing our hair, smoking, or biting a lip, his ticks are far more intrusive and interrupt his daily life hundreds of times. It is certainly easy to see how those with mental illnesses have to work for so long just to come to terms with the illness they will most likely battle for the rest of their lives.
Vocabulary: mental health, mental illness, depressive state, treatment, schizophrenia
This episode of American Life I found to be interesting. One thing I found interesting is that American Life uses the term mental illness. I realize that this was created in 1997, but this is such a dated term and with the people in my life who do have mental disorders I have been told by friends and my family especially that mental illness is not a nice term to use. I have heard my family members use mental illness, but it has been those that have a mental disorder, but when a cousin says it it’s because they refer to something way back when or degrading themself or their disorder. Hearing the words mental illness in this episode just made me uncomfortable because of the fact that I have been told since childhood that these are words that I should not use.
Mental health is psychological well-being and satisfactory adjustment to society and to the ordinary demands of life. A deteriorating mental health can lead to a ‘mental illness’. ‘Mental illness’ is any of the various forms of psychosis or severe neurosis of a clinical diagnosis made by healthcare professionals. There is a different from poor mental health because usually in those without a mental disorder because their mental health will return to normal after some time.
While listening to this I had never really thought of what it would be like to live or work in a mental health institution before. This episode was educational and gave me an understanding of what someone’s life was like in this institution. Hearing about schizophrenia, I had not actually known about what all the voices could command a person to do. Though threatening a child to not doing something is the worst way to get a child to do something. It just makes them want to do it even more than before.
Along these lines, this episode helped me to focus on the difference between mental health and ‘mental illness.’ This also made me question how many people have positive increases in their mental health and how they do it. People experience so many emotions everyday and behaviors for so many different reasons that could be true for the same statement about a person’s mental health status. A person’s mental health status depends on them and what their body is going through, our mental health status fluctuates with our moods.
Vocabulary: ‘mental illness,’ mental disorder, mental health, clinical diagnosis.
This episode was very informative to me, as I really didn’t know much at all about mental illness and abnormality until we started this unit. Each person’s experience really opened my eyes to what mental hospitals are like on the inside. I was shocked by how commonplace each patient saw their diagnosis, and talked about it as if it was an everyday occurrence.
The prologue and the love story was kind of unsettling to me. I didn’t like how the woman criticized her once romantic partner, and made fun of the way he acted and called him crazy. They met in a mental institution, and it’s kind of like the pot calling the kettle black. Even if she wasn’t also mentally unhealthy, her lack of respect for him and his condition made me feel uncomfortable and kind of sad.
Susanna Kaysen’s memoirs of her experiences in the mental institution were a very good example of the patients’ normalized attitude towards their diagnoses. The Lisas compared scars of heroin use, and Susanna compared her own suicide attempts to Polly’s and wasn’t surprised by her attempts, but impressed. She said, “We’ve all been there,” and went on to explain the feeling of holding a gun in your mouth but then putting it down. Suicide attempts were a routine thing for these patients.
The section with Dr. Patricia Deegan was also very eye-opening to me. Before listening to her interview and the voices simulation, I had no idea what it was like to hear voices in your head, and I didn’t realize that they said mean, nasty things. Honestly, whenever I heard about someone having schizophrenia or hearing voices, I instantly thought of the scene in High School Musical 3 when Troy has a meltdown musical number in East High at night because he can’t decide where to go to college. He sings, “The voices in my head tell me they know best. Got me on the edge, they’re pushing, fighting, screaming.” That was honestly the only experience I’d had with someone hearing voices in their heads. I really appreciated the opportunity to learn more about this awful, debilitating mental illness and to experience what it’s like to be in their head for a little bit. Also, David Sedaris’s story of his life made me feel a lot of compassion for him and other patients. He really connected to me by letting me have a glimpse into his life and childhood, and what it’s like to have a voice in your head telling you what to do.
Joel Lovell’s story of his work in a mental institution really showed me how people who suffer from mental illness can kind of slip in and out of it. Carol had a perfectly sane conversation with him at night, but then was murmuring to herself about a children’s book the next morning. When it comes to people with mental illness, I think the line between sickness and sanity can be very blurred, depending on the day and treatments. I also think that people can go through experiences that can result in mental abnormalities, but these might not be debilitating enough to require a diagnosis.
Terms: mental abnormalities, diagnosis, schizophrenia, mental health, treatments, mental institution
Mental health and mental illness are essentially two sides of the same coin. While they do not necessarily mean the same thing, Mental Health is what is being diagnosed when a person is diagnosed with a mental illness. Mental health is the understanding of one’s mental wellbeing. Similar to Physical Health there are ways to have good or poor mental health and mental health status can fluctuate over time between the two. Mental illnesses are classifications of poor mental health. When a person’s mental health declines to a certain point, they can then be diagnosed with a mental illness. These classifications are not strict and there are many varying degrees of mental illnesses ranging from high functioning day to day issues all the way to patients who have to live assisted living areas like hospitals. Mental health is an extremely malleable thing. In a single day many different events both positive and negative can have an effect on the mental health of an individual. Although, like any malleable object, large changes like dents can take longer to be buffed out. Some negative events can have long lasting effects on an individual that can take a long time to recover from.
Mental Health
Mental Illness
Diagnosis
Wellbeing
Fluctuate
Classifications
I think the main idea this episode was trying to get across was that there is a very fine line between sane and insane and that making a clear distinction between the two is often a very hard task. Everyone at some time in their life is going to experience a symptom or two of a certain mental disorder, but that does not necessarily classify them as having the disorder. Determining at what point the number and combination of symptoms constitute a diagnosable disorder is a tricky area. This makes it hard for both professionals to diagnose patients, as well as making it difficult for ordinary people to make sense of their own mental health.
However, I do believe there is a distinct difference between mental health and mental illness. Mental health is a person’s overall emotion and psychological wellbeing. A mental illness is the abnormal functioning of a person’s psychological processes that impair their everyday life. Everyone “has” or experiences mental health. We all have some sort of psychological and mental functioning, whether it be positive or negative. However, not everyone experiences or has a mental illness. As stated before, everyone will at some point in their life experience some sort of distress found in a psychological disorder, however this does not mean they have the disorder itself. Those with mental illnesses experience symptoms consistently and to a degree that it often impairs their daily functioning. While a distinction can be made between mental health and mental illness, this does not necessarily mean they are two strict categories. People’s mental health is impacted and changed daily and those with mental illnesses have the ability to work towards or away from recovery. Someone’s mental health status is certainly not static, it is going to be ever-changing. Especially for those with a mental illness, a change in mental status is often a sign of steps towards recovery. Through treatment and time, their mental health status will hopefully change for the better.
This was a very interesting episode for me to listen to. Both in the subject matter and the way the information was presented. This episode seemed to be a lot choppier and did not flow as well between acts as previous episodes. This at times made it difficult to understand the connection between the acts aside from the fact that they all dealt with mental health. However, I was eventually able to draw a parallel that they centered around the idea that sanity is often a very blurred line, an often scary concept. Being a person who has dealt with a mental illness myself, it is always interesting to hear other’s perspectives, especially from people who struggle with an illness different from mine. It was especially intriguing to listen to David Sedaris talk about his experience with OCD. While I don’t actually have OCD myself, it was strange the amount of parallels I was able to draw between his experience, and my own with a different illness. This then greater emphasized the idea that diagnosing mental illnesses is such a difficult task. Symptoms from one can also be symptoms to another and determining the difference is very tricky. While living with a mental illness is a very troubling and difficult thing to deal with, the people in this episode have proved that treatment, self-help, or simply positive, constructive thought can lead you on a road to recovery.
Terms: Mental health, mental illness, sanity, psychological disorder, abnormal psychology, treatment, OCD
This episode was equal parts sad and enlightening. It looked at mental illness not in a stigmatized way, as much of society does today, but as a normal part of life – and for many people, it is. There is a very thin line between mental health and mental illness or disorders. Sometimes the line can be crossed, temporarily or permanently, due to a trigger, an emotional buildup, or a major event in one’s life. Sometimes it’s a product of genetics, or simply random chance.
Although many people, myself included, don’t actively think about mental hospitals housing those who need assistance to function in a way that will not harm themselves or others. Perhaps more importantly, it told the stories of two people who are functioning adults despite suffering from what could be classified as severe mental illness. They are family members, as demonstrated by Joel, the security guard at the mental health institution. They are doctors, as illustrated by Dr. Patricia Deegan. Even David Sedaris, a regular on the podcast and someone whom listeners would be familiar with (but also not be aware of his personal issues), suffers from a serious mental illness. These people are still able to live normal lives despite battling with their own minds on a regular basis.
I thought that Act Four, with Joel Lovell the security guard, was very interesting. It hit pretty close to home, because I too have someone very close to me with a serious mental illness. I understood exactly his simultaneous feelings of guilt and relief at the distance between him and his brother. It’s very hard to explain unless you’ve experienced it yourself, and although he didn’t focus on that aspect for very long, I really connected with him on that. I found his descriptions of the hospital at night really interesting – how peaceful it was compared to the day. That caught me a little off guard, but now that I think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Although the media may portray mental hospitals to be scary, chaotic places, I really think this episode helped illustrate how that isn’t necessarily the truth. These people face so many struggles coming from inside their head, and it can’t be easy to deal with the stigma of mental illness on top of that.
Mental health, mental illness, mental health institution.
This episode was very interesting in the sense that it had a mix of stories from mental hospitals, patients of hospitals, hospital workers, and from everyday life. I have always viewed all hospitals and especially mental hospitals as places to avoid because the thought of them made me nervous; nervous that something bad would happen while I was there, or that a patient or family of a patient would be dealing with troubling information and I was somehow interrupting them by walking by their room. For me, mental hospitals where places that once you went in, you never came out. I was pretty young when I walked downstairs to find my dad watching One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and for the longest time, that was how I viewed mental hospitals – as a place that people were kept indefinitely, or until they were released only to find that they could not handle life outside of the hospital. Over the years, I have realized that the movie was fiction and that people go to the hospital to get help, but there was still that negative stigma and hopeless feeling associated with it for me.
This episode helped me see people with mental health problems instead of seeing people with a mental illness. To me, mental illness is a more life altering problem and prohibits normal, efficient functioning. While a mental health problem is something that someone lives with and deals with and rarely prohibits normal functioning. With counseling, medication, or maybe changing a daily routine, a mental illness can become a mental health problem and maybe eventually, not a problem. I also think that what is a mental illness to someone, could simply be a mental problem for another person depending on how each person copes (or doesn’t cope) with the situation.
I was very surprised in this episode, that all the stories where from people who are no longer in mental hospitals (if they were even in one in the first place) and they have ways of coping with their problem. I was specifically interested in the doctor who struggled with hearing voices all her life and eventually became a psychologist and is able to better help others who hear voices, and to help educate others who do not hear voices. I was also very shocked by the patient who consoled the hospital worker who was caught sleeping and helped him feel better about his brother and that everyone will be okay. And shortly afterwards, she didn’t respond to the worker and was back to her same old self. I think that story showed that mental illness and mental health can be very flexible and can be triggered by different situations in the environment.
Mental health
Mental illness
This podcast really changed my perspective on what mental illness is like and how people suffering from it may think and act. This was shown especially through Act 2 where Patricia Deegan was interviewed about what it was like to be schizophrenic and how schizophrenics experience the world around them. Like Ira Glass I had never really thought before about how what they experienced wasn’t like the voice in a regular person’s head blasting songs, but it was more sinister, being able to scare the person who was not expecting a voice to suddenly pop out of nowhere. These auditory experiences were not controlled by their mind one bit. I also learned a lot about the way a more compulsive person may think through the interview with David Sedaris on his book Naked.
Through what I have learned in this podcast I feel like I have a better understanding on the slight distinctions between mental health and mental illness. Mental health seems to be more along the lines of a continuum to measure how health the mind of a person is. This could be measured through this person’s behavior, cognition, social ability, emotional stability, or concept of reality. As mental health dwindles, then and only then may someone possibly give way to mental illness. Mental illness is more along the lines of one of the spectrums of mental health. Mental illness is more where an abnormality may appear in the person’s mental health to be able to diagnose them with a disorder. For example, let’s look at Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is one of the many forms of mental illness that can be characterized by abnormal behavior in certain aspects of their life such as hearing auditory hallucinations or slipping into psychosis and losing touch with reality. This does not mean however that these people are completely different from the general population. In Patricia Deegan’s interview, she expressed how we do a great disservice to the mentally ill by treating them as if they are not people. These mentally ill patients can still make relationships, communicate, express themselves in other healthy ways. They just may be different in other aspects of their lives to the degree that they become harmful to themselves and/or the people around them.
I do not believe that the difference between mentally healthy and mentally ill people is all that obvious however. Bosses can have psychopathic tendencies or singers and songwriters can perform compulsive and strange rituals and still be considered mentally healthy and not mentally ill. One thing that the mentally ill may have that others don’t have however, is that specific degree of psychosis that makes them a danger to themselves and others and this may be where the line is drawn. This is a thin line though considering that different combinations of traits that are in the mentally ill can be in mentally healthy people, but the mentally ill just might have the right cocktail of traits to be considered so. Considering this, I also believe that mental health can fluctuate through the course of your life. This can be seen quite well in the rumored statistic being tossed around that most college students experience some form of mental disorder while going through college whether it’s depression or anxiety related. Mental health can definitely fluctuate with the stresses of one’s life and how they treat and handle themselves.
Terms: mental illness, depression, mental disorder, psychopathic, compulsive, psychosis, abnormality, Schizophrenia, mental health