#I have heard 1st hand accounts of historical understandings of mental health issues | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rebellum · 2 days ago

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Oh absolutely

my family doesn't like, sit down and talk about all out mental health issues, it's all done through 1-on-1 conversations

But in terms of blood relatives (not even counting people married into it), JUST my grandparents and people descended from my grandparents, 10/16 of us I know for sure have mental illness. If we are also counting life-altering trauma (where I don't know the details enough to know if the person has mental illness form it) then it's 14/16. On one side of my family.

Mental illness is WAY more common than people think it is. Like if someone is mentally ill and it's suspected to have any sort of genetic component, then absolutely they will have multiple mentally ill relatives, and that's not even getting into the role of inter-generational trauma and poverty.

I see those "every family has that one cousin who's severely mentally ill", but considering how my mom once made me promise not to tell the extended family that I had attempted suicide a week before my cousin's confirmation party (like they literally picked me up from psych ward to attend it, I changed from hospital clothes to party clothes in a truck stop bathroom on our way there) because "it would just upset people for no reason", I'm starting to suspect that some families are 100% mentally ill but everyone's pressuring their kids to not show any symptoms in front of the big family in order to save face.

#If we include the even more extended family? HOO BOY.#Also if alcoholism runs in your family then mental illness probably does too #since alcoholism is one of the most common coping mechanisms for it\#also it's interesting that bc my family has a long history of mental illness that for most people isn't completely debilitating #I have heard 1st hand accounts of historical understandings of mental health issues #Like if you ever hear about someone in the past having an “overactive imagination” it's likely they actually had mental illness like OCD #or hallucinations. Because that's how that was understood back then #Eg my mum and some ancestors had 'overactive imaginations' that were like mine #but nowadays fearing aliens coming to get you or that if you choose the wrong apple to eat that satan will kill your dog is understood as #mental illness #as a kid I had an 'overactive imagination' that now I can understand as early warning signs of mental illness

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