As a nursing student, my natural reaction for this topic was how it related to my own health. I almost wrote about me being misdiagnosed with asthma. I didn't. Here's something more personal about myself that was also a lot easier to write about.
I come from a family with many different mental health issues. My maternal grandpa is a WWII veteran and coming home developed PTSD and found comfort in copious alcohol consumption. His son, my uncle, has had bipolar disorder since the age of 10. My mom has depression as well as three cousins (also maternal side). My family and I joke around that my brother and I are "genetically screwed" when it comes to mental health.
So naturally, last year when I started feeling fatigue, unmotivated, uninterested, and unusually sad, my mom and I both started thinking I could be developing depression. After several more weeks of feeling like "I was in a giant hole" I went home and saw my mom's psychiatrist. The outcome: I maybe had SAD or mild depression, but nothing serious that needed an SSRI. We were both surprised and relieved. The psychiatrist gave me some alternative treatment options (St. John's wart, that light thing, ect.) and within a month, I started feeling better. Mental health is a weird topic and I understand treatment and recovery is not always an easy or trouble free process.
When someone breaks their forearm, you get an x-ray. This clearly shows if you broke your ulna or radius. Depending on the break, you may go to surgery and place rods in your bones and get a cast later. Or you may just have a cast. Physical injuries like this are more black and white with diagnosis and treatment process.
Mental illnesses are essentially no different than a physical illness or injury: they're hard to prevent and you can't personally control the treatment process (i.e make your mind control the osteoclasts that help form a new bone). However, the diagnosis process of mental illnesses has a large gray area. There's no x-ray to 100% guarantee you have a mental illness. The signs and symptoms of mental illness vary from person to person. Types of treatment and dosage can also vary and it may years for someone to find the right medication. In addition, there's a social stigma around mental illness. Some include: "you're attention seeking", "it's all your fault," and my least favorite "just change your perspective and you'll get better." I read A Brave New World in high school and while the book left me mostly confused, one thing I remember is how techno-science is used in the wrong way to treat human nature, corruption, and mental illnesses. You make variants of clones each with a specific purpose, brainwash them, and have them take soma (drugs). In this dystopian society, they tried to end pain by shoving it away with techno science. That's a terrible way, obviously.
When it comes to techno-science and mental health, there's no perfect relationship with the two.
Minor point, but looking ahead: your Grandpa, didn't come home from WW2 with PTSD, because we hadn't invented it yet. He came home with all the misery a hero could have, but until it's called PTSD, it's a different thing. And the names change lives.
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