Unless greed is a mental disorder, those mechanics don't have any mental illnesses.

Did you at least try to turn a chair around and drill it into the wrong place?

Rob,

Interesting post, and a provocative question - should I let my knowledge of one's mental illness color my perception of them?

I think it's also interesting to consider how our reaction to them reflects on us.

I have a friend, a guy who was part of my very close group of friends, who is kind of strange. Everyone perceived him as just that - kind of strange. He had a quirky sense of humor and at times exhibited profound immaturity or a lack of self-awareness, but nobody would have called him sick.

Then, one day, his mind just collapsed and left him completely detached from reality. He called me and two other close friends to come over to just talk to him, and I remember feeling profoundly frightened when I walked into his apartment. His face was emotionless, his eyes were just blank, and he kept rambling nonsense jibberish like "we are all among the stars and i must discover the code to unlock the universe." This was not a joke - he was batshit crazy.

His family had him committed and he ended up being put on some strong anti-psychotics. We found out that he'd had two previous psychotic 'breaks', once while he was in college and once when he was in high school.

After he got out of the hospital, we hung still out, but often he would just sit and stare into the distance with the cold dead eyes of a mannequin.

Two years and one more psychotic 'break' later, he's pretty much back to the old guy he used to be. Most of us accept him for what he is and see his illness as just a small part of who he is. The last time he broke with reality was much less scary.

But one of our friends, a profoundly selfish and narcississtic guy, refuses to believe our sick friend is really sick. He adamantely believes that he is only pretending to be sick to get attention. After that initial break, this guy basically just wrote our sick friend off. He actually expressed a feeling of hurt that our sick friend would go to such lengthes to get attention.

I think the point of telling this story is that the way we deal with others' mental nuances reflects much more about our own personalities. You feel empathy towards Gail probably in no small part because you are a caring and empathetic person. My selfish friend feels disdain and disbelief towards my sick friend because he is a narcississtic and insensitive asshole.

great story Dr. Rob! Today a woman skipped the whole line in the Banana Republic and I didn't say anything. Does that make her mentally ill or me?

Awww, I love Dr. Rob with a soft spot. And I've been demanding that dipstick for years, at least with psychiatrists, not psychologists. You're the kind of therapist I'd want for my closest friends. Believe me, they need you. Hehehe.

Before you even mentioned it, OCD flashed through my head. She sounds a little extreme, this Gail.

I truly think, though, that everybody has a little OCD in them. We say we're "anal" about something, but that's easier than saying we have OCD.

Robin, that makes her a bitch.

To some degree, aren't all personality factors chemical in origin? I personally don't believe in free will, and most disorders seem to be a difference in magnitude, not type.

Dr. Rob,
In Gail's case, she could be suffering from OCD, but then you have to ask, although an illness, is she taking steps to control herself? If not, how much sympathy should you have? If someone got an infected cut because they never washed it/used a band aid, you would call them a moron. Should it be any different for someone who is letting thier neurosis run wild?

matt--do you have OCD? i imagine it might be a little hard to understand it if you don't. even if you take steps to ameliorate the symptoms it'll always sort of be there, like a little neurotic voice sitting on your shoulder compelling you to check your keys 50 times before you can leave the apartment.

i'm down to checking my keys about 3 times at this point, but if something's going on in my life that stresses me out, trust that i'll be back up to checking them about 5-6 times. if it's really bad i'll go up to an amusing (to my friends) but seriously annoying (to me) 10. sometimes i force myself to just NOT do whatever my brain is telling me at any particular moment (NOT spill a drop of coffee on my left pant leg because i just spilled one on my right pant leg and my pant legs will be upset if they're not both dripping in coffee stains and one of them feels uneven, and if my pant legs feel uneven then the sky might burst into flames and the human race would suffer the apocalypse), but sometimes it's just easier to spill the fucking coffee.

That is a very interesting post on social phobia! In fact, to find out more about social phobia, check out http://www.whatcausespanicattacks.com, they have many great articles and tips to guide you.

Dr. Rob Note: This post isn't about social phobia, and this person is clearly pimping his or her site (which is about panic attacks and not even about social phobia), but if there's anything on there that might help, so be it.

I like how Kate claims OCD yet is unable to use proper grammar and sentence structure.

it's not that i'm unable to write without proper grammar and sentence structure, i just prefer not to. it sounds better this way, and although you'd probably hurl if you read any of my 'poetry,' you'd feel pretty stupid if you tried to understand anything academic i've written.

anyway i realize 'notkate' is just trolling, and poorly at that. why would i claim to be OCD if i weren't? it's not exactly my favorite personality trait. and OCD manifests differently in everyone--if you could see the state of my room you'd understand i'm not of the 'anal-retentive' typology. feel free to come to one of the lectures i TA in abnormal/freudian personality and i'll educate you about the different types of OCD symptomatology (most notably 'anal-expulsive')..

on a bigger and more relevent picture, yesterday's post got me thinking about the obsessive component of OCD character structure as it relates to catatonic schizophrenia--like the overwhelming imagery of doom, death & destruction that are typical in both. i know there's some research going on to link the two, but i've read none of it. suffice it to say a lot of my obsessions involve death, guns, fire, nuclear war, etc., etc.,.....while others involve being locked out of my apartment. i think the CBT technique for dealing with some of this stuff is to put a rubber band around your wrist and snap it whenever shit like this starts becoming overwhelming, but that always seemed a pretty assinine thing to do in the face of vivid jumping-off-a-bridge imagery..

ps--i totally spelled 'relevant' wrong....*snaps rubber band*

Gail...she's the one who doesn't believe in helping her patients to see a psychiatrist for medications they may need to take care of mental illnesses right? She's a special one. Do you ever have a normal day, whatever that is?

Dr. Rob Note: No, that's "Allison." See Group Supervision in the Archives.

Wow, I totally messed that one up :-\ My bad on that one. I guess it doesn't help that I only read it once and that was a while back. Maybe they should hang out.

"As we've learned, mental health providers have perhaps just as many difficulties as the general population"

I wouldn't be surprised if people in the mental health field turn up with issues more often than the general population. The stress level is there to aggravate a borderline problem, and having lists of symptoms memorized gives anyone with even a shred of suggestibility plenty of material for "ack! I'm doing this and this! I wonder if I've got that! [subconsciously starts doing three other related things]."

I don't really think you're any nicer than me, but I often find myself not defending those with mental illness. I know as far as the Front Range of Colorado goes, Colorado Springs has an overnight facility, Pueblo has a large mental institution and I'm sure Denver is spotted with a couple as well, though Springs and Pueblo, I understand, don't send very many people to Denver.

The police have taken to removing people from my 7 Eleven and just dropped them off a few miles away. At least it'll take, probably, the rest of my shift for them to come back.

The only guy I had a mind to defend, and I'm not sure why as he was a total prick, was Tourette's Guy. Just the other day, a customer and I were having a cup of coffee and talking about it. The guy says "I never liked that black guy who made those weird noises." My response was "I never much minded him. He has Tourette's Syndrome."

The sad thing about TG is that a lot of his weird mannerisms and behaviors are a direct reflection of society's teasing. There's a tattoo parlor on the other side of the block called "Freaky's"; TG takes it as a direct offense, as if someone is calling him a freak (which probably has occurred) and spends hours yelling at the sign.

I stick with observation more than anything.

From Arrested Development:

Lucille: Apparently mood-altering medication leads to street drugs...that's what this very handsome young doctor said on The Today Show.
Michael: ::pause:: That was Tom Cruise, the actor.
Lucille: They said he was some kind of scientist.

Thought you might appreciate it.