Mental illness is a very broad designation for what may happen to a human being, as far as the brain is concerned. Many people may think that mental illness is just something made up by doctors or by the general public that is used to justify someone’s odd behavior. In many situations that may well be the case, but the rest of those cases are genuine mental illness. Although there may be people who lean towards mental illness to justify their actions, without having any type of disorder, those who do have mental disorders have the legitimate right to justify their actions to some extent. Mental illness doesn’t justify everything. Mental illness may occur if a person’s brain is being affected by some type of growth or a blood clot that is applying pressure to a specific part of the person’s brain. With that kind of pressure, there’s the risk of the brain not processing the information given by what surrounds it, making the sufferer have different actions, possibly different attitudes towards fellow people. Many of the mental illnesses have this cause, but others may occur due to elevated psychological stress, such as verbal and/or physical abuse. When this situation occurs, the victim is put under terrible stress, and most of the people will give in, and probably go into a deep depression, which can, ultimately, lead to death. A term that most people use when they do face or meet someone who has a serious mental illness is crazy, nuts, and some similar words. That is in fact degrading to the patient, and to who is responsible for the treatment. Having a mental illness isn’t the same as being crazy, and this is a stereotype that needs to be dropped, and the sooner the better. Mental illnesses are something that exists, and it is very much real, and can bring despair to whoever suffers from it. Of course that now, on the 21st century we’re better prepared to deal with this situation that what we were on the late 19th century, and even before that. Nowadays we have institutions specifically for mental patients, specialized doctors and psychologists, who can help people with this condition. What we need to keep in mind is that this is a serious illness, and it can affect any of us, at any point in time. It’s not something that is specifically genetic, although genetics may have some level of influence here, but it’s something that can happen to us, without apparent reason to people on the outside, but to the one who suffers from it, it will be painfully obvious.
