using a mental health issue as an excuse?

[snoogums]

Does anyone else here seem to think that there are a lot of people these days that do horrible things and then use mental illness as an excuse for it? like now days there are soo many different mental illnesses I bet if they felt like it doctors could blame just about anything on a mental illness and some people get off way to easily. Also I have noticed a fair bit of people who pretend to have a mental illness for what? attention? I have noticed it a lot at my school and it really annoys me like I don't get it. Does anybody agree with me? I have nothing against people with real mental illness.

[Thirteen]

Hey Blue!

Well first of all... There are some things that ARE excusable because of mental illness, but other things that aren't. So I can safely say that my opinion on the subject, personally, would completely depend on the case (like what happened, and the mental illness, mainly).

Second, I've noticed this thing about faking mental illnesses. Nobody can actually tell you what the reasons for the people YOU know, but I can give you my general census on people I've come across faking mental illnesses.
The common reasons (from what I've seen) are: Attention (Which can be because of lack of attention at home, or *more common* the Spoiled Brat, who thinks they should be EVERYBODY'S world, not just Mommy and Daddy's); Trying to be "Unique" (I notice this is most frequent in "alternative" subcultures, like Goth, Emo, Punk, etc.); Competition ("Oh, *insert name here* has THIS? Well I have THIS, THAT, and THE OTHER!" without having all [or in most cases, ANY!] of what they've claimed).

I can't say if those reasons are for the people you've known, but I can safely say that was the case for the people I've seen. Some people might say "They probably have an underlying mental issue", but most of the time this isn't true (from what I've seen). It might be on the rare occasion, but most people who fake these things end up growing out of it, too.

[snoogums]

I just found out my sister is bi polar and I told one of my friends about it and what it is and everything to kinda vent and she was like "oh ya I think I am bi polar too maybe I should go get checked out" But I have known her for a long time and I know she is nothing like that. Also I have a lot of friends that take thoes "do you have a mental disorder? or witch mental disorder do you have?" quizzes. And I know that there are actually people who have them and people who fake it kind of annoy me -.-. I also think that no matter what your excuse is weather its true or not no reason is ever good enough for killing but that's just my personal opinion.

[Whisperer]

I totally agree with you. People think they are depressed just when they get sad and it's so annoying! They are like oh I know how you feel when they are just sad because their boyfriend broke up with them. It always pisses me off because I'm just like yeah right you don't understand what it's like to not be able to sleep, eat, and not get out of bed so stop craving attention all the time. People don't understand that they are allowed to have feelings but it's when the emotions get out of control that it can be a mental disorder. It totally bugs me too! There's my rant haha

[Kate*]

As a person who actually has depression (finally diagnosed about 2 months ago after suffering for 10+ years) I can say that this does bother me. If you really think you have a mental illness see a professional and if not or if you refuse to do that then don't bring it up with me. I also have a problem with people who use their illnesses as an excuse not to do things like going to school. My depression cost me one meeting of one class in my entire educational career and it was at the end of the year that I re-termed the year from hell. Yes illnesses have to be managed, but they aren't an excuse to get out of things. Try not to let them hold you back.

Having said that, everyone is different and we have NO IDEA what someone else is going through so it really isn't fair to judge them and say that they're lying, faking, using it as an excuse, etc. and doing so isn't going to help anyone diagnosed disorder or not.

[snoogums]

Originally Posted by Kate*

Having said that, everyone is different and we have NO IDEA what someone else is going through so it really isn't fair to judge them and say that they're lying, faking, using it as an excuse, etc. and doing so isn't going to help anyone diagnosed disorder or not.

You are right about this part.

[OMFG!You'reActuallySmart!]

Originally Posted by snoogums

Does anyone else here seem to think that there are a lot of people these days that do horrible things and then use mental illness as an excuse for it?

It's not something I would say is new, "these days", as that implies in previous years this didn't happen. There's a set of diagnoses to reflect this behaviour in people, such as Factitious Disorder in the DSM, which states someone is intentionally feigning in order to gain something (i.e. medications to abuse). In general though, it may waste the clinician's time but there could very well be an actual mental illness at play other than the one being feigned. For me, it depends on what "horrible things" the person did.

Originally Posted by snoogums

like now days there are soo many different mental illnesses I bet if they felt like it doctors could blame just about anything on a mental illness and some people get off way to easily.

This has been a growing concern amongst clinicians and researchers because not only is the amount of mental illnesses increasing. Also, certain behaviours once considered "normal" are now labelled "abnormal" and vice-verca. The most controversial one is homosexuality because it was deemed a mental disorder but in 1974, researchers called bullshit on it and it became "normal".

In fact, you can look online for the proposed DSM-V and see the suggested changes. Unlike in previous versions, the DSM-V tries to use methods of grading the severity of a mental disorder to make diagnoses more accurate. I'm not sure when it's meant to be released, I think around 2013-2014 but they've been pushing the date farther and farther back.

http://www.dsm5.org/proposedrevision...der-names.aspx

Originally Posted by snoogums

I just found out my sister is bi polar and I told one of my friends about it and what it is and everything to kinda vent and she was like "oh ya I think I am bi polar too maybe I should go get checked out" But I have known her for a long time and I know she is nothing like that. Also I have a lot of friends that take thoes "do you have a mental disorder? or witch mental disorder do you have?" quizzes.

I've taken those quizzes before purely for fun as it's obvious to anyone, they are not diagnostic, I'm not sure why people would think otherwise. Hell, many of them don't give an accurate representation of the mental disorder(s) they attempt to assess.

I think the main exception is depression because the name implies the person is sad and it's easy to associate trivial crap with being sad, such as breaking up with your girlfriend/boyfriend. It becomes a game of semantics when you tell the person they're sad but not depressed, especially when the necessary symptoms for depression include profound sadness.

Originally Posted by snoogums

I also think that no matter what your excuse is weather its true or not no reason is ever good enough for killing but that's just my personal opinion.

You may already be familiar with it but if not, look up the Greyhound Bus killings in 2008 that occurred near Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. There was such a large speculation Mr. Li was a deranged killer, at work and at university, everyone including the profs were talking about it.

[Dream]

Well, people are going to try to get attention regardless; saying they have a disorder is just one way to do it.

The real problems arise when they have things they actually need to do like hold down a job and they cannot do it because of their disorder. There are people like this who actually do struggle with their disorder, and they don't want to use it as an excuse; however, it can really be limiting to them.

[Thirteen]

Originally Posted by snoogums

I just found out my sister is bi polar and I told one of my friends about it and what it is and everything to kinda vent and she was like "oh ya I think I am bi polar too maybe I should go get checked out" But I have known her for a long time and I know she is nothing like that.

Yes, Bipolar Disorder is too common for people to try and fake. You know why? Because the broad (and inaccurate) generalization is that if you're HAPPY and SAD, you must be BIPOLAR. I'm sure, since you said your sister has been diagnosed with it, you know that it's more complicated than that.

Originally Posted by Kate*

Having said that, everyone is different and we have NO IDEA what someone else is going through so it really isn't fair to judge them and say that they're lying, faking, using it as an excuse, etc. and doing so isn't going to help anyone diagnosed disorder or not.

Actually, sometimes it's incredibly obvious if somebody is lying. For example, the one friend I had tried to fake Depression, Bipolar, OCD, BPD, and ADHD. Let me break it down, how I KNOW this friend was lying, and how it's not just a "judgement".

- Depression and Bipolar contradict one another. If she had either, she wouldn't fake both.
- OCD is kind of obvious. I'm sure she'd have at least one noticeable characteristic. Her idea of OCD was trying to tell her [now ex] boyfriend she didn't like her shoelaces uneven, when she has never given a fuck about that as long as I've known her.
- BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), I know she doesn't have. I've been officially diagnosed with it, I know the symptoms, considering I have 8 of the 9 major symptoms. This friend (who is now an ex-friend, BTW) has ZERO symptoms.
- ADHD was easy to disprove, considering she used to take Ritalin recreationally, when she had lived in a different city for a bit (we were friends before she moved, after she moved, and when she moved back). Once she moved back, she was unable to get Ritalin from her friends, so she went to the doctor. She claimed to have ADHD, and her doctor gave her Concerta. She tried to say the Concerta "didn't work", but Ritalin helps her fictitious ADHD, ONLY when she snorts it.
To be "diagnosed" when she was 20 with ADHD, and have a bullshit excuse why she doesn't take her non-snortable pills (the Concerta was in the crush-proof pills or whatever), obvious lies again.

Don't assume that people are always automatically "judging", sometimes their point-of-view can be completely justified. Just saying, sometimes it's obvious, but you're right that it's not always.


Anyways, mental illnesses, if legitimate, can interfere with different kinds of functioning. For example, my mental health issues interfere with a handful of things, one of those things being work. I can't handle my job without Anxiety medication, and thus can only work part-time. There are other problems too (past and present), but I'm not going to go too much further with it.
However, there are mental health issues that can cause someone to kill, in a lapse of judgement. One of those factors to trigger that could be hallucinations, for example. Though it's not as common as media might try to tell you, hallucinations could easily cause somebody who, normally functions alright, to fly off the handle. But, that's when putting that person on the right medication would make sense.

Overall, I think the public's view on mental illnesses is quite narrow-minded, which is probably at least part of why people tend to fake these things. Without the right knowledge, they either fake it and think they're right, or self-diagnose and think they're right.

[Kate*]

Maybe it's just the way I was raised. I have a strong family history of mental illness on my dad's side and my mom's family tends to minimize and mock mental illnesses. Even with the history my dad was the kind of person that if you weren't willing to help yourself and chose to just complain and not do anything about it, then he had no patience for you. I once told my mom I was suicidal and was told to "suck it up" and "get over it" becasue my mentally healthy (for lack of a better term) peers, and my mom when she was my age, were perfectly capable of doing what I was struggling with and more. So if I told either of my parents that I couldn't go to work or school or whatever because of my mental health issues they would've forced me to anyway. So I learned to drag myself out of bed on the bad days and just do everything that was expected of me without complaining. There were plenty of times that I would've loved to have my official diagnosis to use as an excuse. For example, I tried to drop a class because I felt like it would be too stressful for me due to the amount of work in addition to my other classes and stress triggers suicidal thoughts and breakdowns for me which no one knew about. I went to my advisor and she told me "too much work isn't a good enough excuse to drop a class" She let me do it anyway, but it would've been nice to be able to say "I have depression and the stress will be too much for me" but I probably still would've been reluctant to use the excuse even if I could've just because I was taught not to do so. I guess I have adopted my parents attitude somewhat. I'm more understanding than my parents, but I still agree with them in most cases.

As far as the lying goes, sometimes you can't tell if someone is lying. I suspect I had depression since childhood, but if I had said to someone I have depression it wasn't their place to say that I was lying or not because they didn't know. Obviously if you're saying that you have co morbid disorders that you can't possibly be diagnosed with at the same time then yes you're probably lying, otherwise it isn't really my place to say whether someone has a legit diagnosis or not; hence the disclaimer of "I'm not a professional" we have to use here and even with people in person.

[Revolution]

Some things, a person really cannot do with a mental issue. But others, they're def. using it as an excuse. For example, my ex best friend suffered from depression, but apparently, her depression made it so that she can turn in things in any class late. I thought it was pretty dumb, because I knew what she would be doing instead of doing her work, and that was drinking and partying. She suffered from legit depression, but it's not an excuse to just slack off.

[L'espoir]

Originally Posted by Coffee❤

Some things, a person really cannot do with a mental issue. But others, they're def. using it as an excuse. For example, my ex best friend suffered from depression, but apparently, her depression made it so that she can turn in things in any class late. I thought it was pretty dumb, because I knew what she would be doing instead of doing her work, and that was drinking and partying. She suffered from legit depression, but it's not an excuse to just slack off.

I agree with you, its not excuse just to go out instead of working... sometimes thought it can make you turn in work late. When I was really depressed I literally just sat and cried all the time. I'd get my work out, look at it and just cry so I'd never get it started... So I'd manage to drag myself into college and get to the lesson but I rarely got any work done at the times when it was particularly bad. I just lost the will to do anything.

[Hallelujah]

Mmm. I know exactly where you're coming from with this. When I told my previous manager that I was taking time off work for Depression, she said "Oh, I have that but I'm a stronger person so I get on with life", which not only wasn't very thoughful of her, considering I was in tears, but in the years I've known her, she's always been a very active, sociable, upbeat person, so I did have my doubts.

It does get to me, especially considering the damn amount of effort I've put into getting better. I was embarassed about signing off work, I became agoraphobic because of how I'd reacted in public...I stopped eating, drinking, caring about anything.

It...URGH. It annoys me how someone can stand faking it - AND how many people fall for it. Problem is that most people have limited knowledge of mental illness, so faking one could potentially be very easy. I'll admit, until I became ill, I hadn't a clue about depression or mental health, and I had no idea how awful mental illnesses could be. I'd never fake one, but until you've experienced it, I don't think you can accurately understand it.

[ronymajani]

Lying has always been a bad thing and making excuses to not do something especially claiming you have a mental illness when you don't just for attention and so you don't have to do school work and so you'll be treated specially cause sooner or later living a lie like that will start to become truth meaning if you convince yourself your mentally ill your mind will start to believe and if someone finds out about your lie it will ruin your reputation.
Sincerely RNY.M the new teenhelp.org unemployed mentor.