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Mental Illness is a Choice
Having been a researcher now to interlink Neuroscience, Physiology, Psychology, and Pathology, and after having worked with a few thousand patients of various geographies and demographics, I can say you just nailed it. Other than structural brain disabilities, which are mostly genetic anomalies, or due to undetected epilepsies in childhood, other mental illnesses are just choices.
Being happy is a choice. Being miserable is a choice.
Why Mental Health Issues and Mental Illness problems is Increasing?
Why is this the fact that “mental illness” is a choice is true? I have been a sufferer of narcissistic injury for 27 years. I also believed that it is not me, but others who are responsible for my misery. This is in fact a common belief amongst every mentally ill individual. This is also a good coping mechanism adapted by mentally ill patients(both diagnosed and undiagnosed).
Once you start believing in the theory that it is not you but in fact the others who are responsible for your misery, then you free yourself even from trying to recover. You develop what is called Cyndrella Syndrome and wait for someone to come and rescue you. However, a mentally ill individual can attract only other mentally ill individuals. Therefore, you do not get the rescuer, but another victim, another abuser, another mentally ill person to collude with you to propagate this theory of mental health illness.
What is the Root Cause of Mental Illness?
- Any biological organisms have only three, and only three functions, Survive, Thrive, Reproduce.
- The Human species has been one of the weakest species in history. We got killed even by mosquitos, small bacteria like E-Coli.
- Our ancestors neither had big jaws like the leopards, venom like snakes, power like elephants. No horn, now big nails, nothing.
- We first started with chasing away the “hunter animals” from their prey to get easy meat. We did not have enough tools to haunt.
- Then our brains started developing. Traces of the first toolbox workshop in caves are found in Blombos Cave, about 73,000 years back. So, this needed a brain to get developed.
- Sapiens were still inferior to Neanderthals in the race of the selected human species, in build, as well as inabilities.
- Roughly around 50,000 years ago, traces of the prefrontal cortex in the human brain were discovered. Neanderthals got extinct some 40,000 years back.
- So, the most eminent organ of humans became the brain, PFC in particular, that separates us from all other animals.
- PFC drives our consciousness, through a significantly high number of Serotonin receptors. (Most psychopaths have fewer Serotonin receptors. Even in depression SSRI drugs are prescribed just for that).
In any form of mental illness, whether it is structural, genetic, or functional, the commonest thing is the low activation of the prefrontal cortex.
Why Mental Illness is Increasing?
So, we have to understand why so many are mentally ill?
Because their PFC is shrinking(please do your research on human brains shrinking by 15% in google scholar). But, why PFC is shrinking?
Because, PFC by evolution was developed as an “independent organ”, interconnected with the rest of the brain to help humans to survive. It is our logical processing center. It is our consciousness center. It regulates Oxytocin, which again drives our social behavior. Thus one thing that is common in all mental illnesses(even an undiagnosed, but self-perceived) is shrinking PFC.
Because PFC was evolutionarily developed to help us survive against extreme environmental threats, and existential challenges, the Narcissism and Psychopathy’s early traces are found as soon as we started city establishment. Because we could now hoard food, we had less threat, the PFC was needed less and less, and therefore it started shrinking.
Romans took this extinction to the heights by amassing wealth beyond comprehension. Rome’s reservation started after 429 BCE after the first epidemic eliminated their 75% population. Then again after 410 ADE, when they were dusted by the barbarians(so much so, that even to date, some of those areas have zero birth).
As children are being brought up more and more comfortable, they have no worries about survival. People in stable jobs, no threat of food. So, PFC would be gone with each passing day (at least the Serotonin receptors).
Because PFC is a plug-in to the brain, we have to treat this part of the brain as an autonomous system. And that is the exact reason why a metaphysical entity, such as psychology is developed in us. PFC wants autonomy and wants to drive the game.
With an existential threat, now PFC is facing extinction. Mental illness is dysregulated frontal cortex because it is threatened by evolutionary extinction. So, PFC will alter your psychology to feel that you have a survival threat. Mental disorders are a psychological threat. They cause loneliness and rejection. You don’t get to reproduce. You can’t thrive.
What is the Treatment of Mental Illness?
So what is the treatment? Can mental illness be treated? One line answer is no. Mental illness can not be treated because the brain’s wearing has changed. It takes years and tremendous shocks to affect the functioning of the brain. We are still at the infantile stage of understanding the brain. We do not know enough of why the brain goes through self-defeating changes?
There is one, and only one, and only one treatment for any mental disorder. Hunger. Quit your job, and home. Leave all the comfort. Make yourself go through hunger for a few days. Now PFC feels, okay, alright, I have to play a role here. I have to help the body to survive. All the white matters of the brain connect. Your brain rewires.
Control goes back to PFC. And you reach the top of your mental health. Proof? Fyodor Dostoevsky realized that unless he is hungry, his novels do not come out well. So he would write, and earn money. Then he would be mentally ill. He would play gambling and lose all his wealth, and then produce some amazing literary works.
Conclusion
Mental health is all about your threat to survival. If you do not have a survival threat, your survival itself will be threatened.
Remember the wisdom of life, the more you have it easy in the life, the more you are going to suffer from mental illness. The more you get settled down, the more mental illness you will suffer. The more you raise your bar of satisfaction, your mental health will detoriate.
You can start from knowing yourself better and by understanding your mental health condition by taking our clinically validated free online self-assessment mental health tests.
You can also read about our awareness and consciousness article and start improving your awareness.
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