The Problem of Keeping Balanced
EARLY Wednesday morning, August 7, 1974, downtown New Yorkers were startled when they looked upward. A tightrope walker was doing stunts on a cable stretched between the tops of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, 1,350 feet above! What did it take to perform in this way? Physical balance.
Balance of another kind is becoming ever more difficult to maintain today. Just as a strong gust of wind could have unbalanced that tightrope walker, so things are occurring in people’s lives to cause more and more of them to become mentally or emotionally unbalanced.
Precipitating Factors
Pointing to what often brings on mental illness, psychiatry professor Peter Sainsbury of Chichester, England, says: “When social stresses prove too strong” mental illness results.
Sainsbury explained that stressful changes—such as loss of employment or enforced separations—often immediately precede the onset of mental illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia. Another report showed the emotional toll taken by sickness in a family. It revealed that when a child died of leukemia, in more than 50 percent of the cases the families involved needed psychiatric care.
The stress of living in the public eye is another factor that can bring on mental illness. For example, one of the first astronauts to walk on the moon suffered a “nervous breakdown” shortly thereafter. Upon recovering he was made chairman of the National Institute of Mental Health. But here again there was too much stress, for he had to cancel a speech in May 1974 because of a recurrent attack of depression.
More recently, the case of the wife of a prime minister attracted public attention for a similar reason. Discussing the causes of her needing psychiatric treatment, she stated that she was ill-prepared for the pomp and publicity that went with being in such a prominent position. She confessed: “I long for the day when I will no longer be the Prime Minister’s wife.”
The distresses of war also contribute to mental ills. A New York Times heading of January 22, 1975, reported: “Heavy Psychological Toll Is Half-Hidden but Shattering Result of Long Vietnam War.” There has been a great increase of depression among Vietnamese mothers, and of schizophrenia among their teen-age sons. This mental illness is reflected in skyrocketing suicides and a great increase of violent crimes. These crimes are unusual for the Vietnamese, who are disciplined from infancy to smother aggressive impulses in personal relations.
Scope of the Problem
The number of those succumbing to mental illness in one form or another is shockingly high. According to the United States National Institute of Mental Health, at least one out of ten Americans suffers from some mental or emotional disturbance. There are close to one half million patients in mental hospitals. In addition, some ten million others suffer from mental illnesses, and 250,000 new patients enter mental institutions every year.
Staggering also is the expense of mental illness, costing Americans some $20,000,000,000 annually. And even more tragic are the statistics on suicides. There are upward of 20,000 suicides a year, with mental illness accounting for ever so many of these, even as it does for the ten times as many unsuccessful suicide attempts.
In Britain, the National Association for Mental Health reports that mental disorders are the single greatest cause of long-term incapacity. Some 32 million workdays are lost annually because of it. The association complains that, whereas mental patients fill half of the hospital beds, only one fifth as much is spent on them as is spent on patients with physical disorders.
Have you or a loved one ever suffered because of too much stress, or have you ever had a “nervous breakdown” or a struggle with mental illness? If so, you know that it can bring with it the worst kind of suffering, as well as great hardship to one’s immediate family.
What forms does mental illness take?
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HIGH PRICES
PROBLEMS WITH THE CHILDREN
TOO MUCH TO DO
FEAR OF CRIME
ILLNESS