A long time ago I watched a program that showed an experiment where researchers wanted to see what would happen if a monkey was presented with very little maturnal warmth and interaction. So they substituted a normal mother with nothing more than a cold metal mother. It was very hard to watch the result of that experiment. And though it was so many years ago that I viewed that documentary, I can still remember so much of it as if I had watched it recently. The monkey simply could not adapt or participate when exposed to a group of other monkeys that had a normal mother and could interact with each other. The monkey became so upset and frightened that they removed it from the cage of social monkeys and put it back in isolation with the metal mother where it just clung to that metal mother. The monkey really didn't know what to do other than that.

I think about the depth of that and what that means in terms of human beings. I remember how in that experiment everything that resembled anything nourishing in the way of affectionate interaction was taken away.The monkey did receive nourishment, but it was without any kind of maternal
like nurturing it was provided very rigidly. As a result an extreme consequence was noted. The infant was capable of surviving but that was all it had managed, there was no capacity to do anything more but cling to a metal dummy.

In human beings, if we really look, we can observe a variety of incapacities depending on the way a human child is nurtured. A human child will respond with little interaction with a mother if there is a substitute source of warmth and interaction provided through a father, a sibling a teacher a friend etc.
From the very beginning within a family a human being's perceptions of interacting is effected and formed. So for every human being born their mental health depends on their immediate environment and what takes place in that environment. Even if a human being is born with a genitic challenge of some kind the outcome and well being of that human being depends on what that human being is taught, tended, and nurtured around whatever challenge is presented.

We address so many different challenges in human beings today and we have this manual that expresses groups of conditons and symptoms divided into what is known as disorders. We try to develope ways of understanding these different disorders and search for ways to provide treatment both by developing drugs and methods of addressing how to nurture the various humans that present different disorders. When the terms recovery, healing, finding happiness, sense of well being, and assisting in presenting any kind of treatment that helps each human to attain ability to thrive, there is still an ongoing question of our acuracy in applying proper treatment.

This article talks about healing, therapy verses no therapy and sends a message that isolation impedes progress when it comes to learning how to function in a sense of quality to life. The overall message addresses a need to recognize that there can be a productive way to address life even with limiting mental illness. There are key words missing in much of the language and information presented and one key word that is paramont is adaptation. All human beings are designed to adapt and will do so either in ways that are considered healthy or damaging. Healing itself must include clear guides to help someone to understand how to adapt out of bad adaptations with permission that conveys a message where someone truely understands that it is truely ok to adapt without feeling guilty or damaged.

Personally, I agree that we can learn to adjust to life and become productive even though we may experience a mental illness, or some kind of lack. But, there has to be a guide, an availability of some kind of nurture to each person who struggles with any kind of psychological struggle. In my own observance of that study done so long ago, I truely feel that as human beings we cannot just expect someone that struggles with any kind of mental illness to just know how to heal on their own.

With any mental illness as well as a lack of early nurturing there is always going to be a desire to isolate due to a deep sence of lack. So it is important that each individual be provided with a way to address and understand what may have impeded their personal progress in their past. The application of a medication cannot be used to substitute for a nurturing that is absent in a human being that presents issues with coping in society.

Each human being that presents a personal struggle must truely be educated in a way that helps that person LEARN what may not have been provided to help them interact properly. Each human being is a unique puzzle and it is very important that each human being be addressed as a whole puzzle and not just a person who presents mental illness of some kind.

Therefore, education is very important to each individual, education that provides whatever is needed for each person to truely see their own missing peices without interpreting these missing pieces as meaning the only answer is isolation and disfunction for the rest of their lives.

This must include each person to access their personal history of how they were raised and effected by their personal family environment. The origins of all perceptions must be addressed and recognized. If that can take place with therapy to address whatever is not there with ways to accept and learn new healthier perceptions a person can find ways to heal.

Ofcourse I am addressing all those that are at a point where they are old enough to recognize there is some form of mental illness that needs to be treated.

The real answer is educating every parent in how to provide the proper nourishment in the first place. And it is also important to be able to identify any special needs presented by a child so that they can learn from an early age how to compensate and thrive.

Our ability to identify the different challenges that are presented in a manual
to be used as a guide still has limits. There is still much we do not know.
We are learning everyday about the human brain. And as we are learning we are also learning that humans are adaptable and can thrive despite imperfections that may be present. So HOPE should remain in each of us. And we all must consciously be nourished and nurtured with a message that says, yes, we are not perfect, however we can learn to adapt and we are truely designed to do just that.

Open Eyes