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Clyde said:
pachyderm, I fixed your trigger icon, as you mentioned.

I also agree with all of you--I do feel it is understaffed, underpaid, etc. I know people surely do not get the best treatment they really need, and usually (Usually, but not always...) that is not so much the fault of the workers as it is the funding they get.

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(How did you fix the icon?)

My objection to the "system" is not so much that financial resources are limited, and poorly distributed, but that "they" do not seem to know what causes mental illness; they do not really even know what "it" is. And they do not appear to care. Not enough, at least, to ask.

Diagnoses abound. Bipolar, for instance, or a description I like better, manic-depression. Clearly, something is cycling. Why? What inner system is out of balance and must cycle from one extreme to another? Why isn't somebody asking? Why are medications prescribed only to suppress the symptoms?

Or take "schizophrenia" -- someone has hallucinations, auditory or visual. Why do mental health professionals (by and large) seem not to wonder about the content of the hallucinations? Do they ever investigate them? Or do they give up on that enterprise, and prescribe medications to suppress the symptoms? Medications which, in fact, only partially succeed in doing that. Wonder why? Maybe there is something in there that is trying to get expressed.

So, I see a lot of mental health treatment today as aimed to cover things up rather than to reveal. Why? Because lots of people are afraid of what is hidden. What will be challenged if the hidden becomes known? Must it remain hidden to preserve someone's stability? The stability of something? Or can the truth be known and redound to the benefit of everyone?

Well, these are my concerns. Maybe they are the concerns of others. Maybe not. Maybe some on these forums (and their therapists) are indeed trying to uncover some truths.