Welcome to From Insults to Respect.
Perhaps some of you who have joined us here today have begun to notice that many in the media have begun to replace using the words “mentally ill,” “mental disorder,” or “psychopathology,” with words like, “a person with a mental health concern,” “mental health issue,” “mental health challenge,” or “mental health problem.” This change is viewed by some as more respectful, while others insist that this realm of existence is an illness like any other illness, and we should therefore stick to the original psychiatric terminology.
Why would anyone care what words are used to refer to a group of people? Isn’t one name just as good as another? 
Try convincing a black person that the n-word is as good as any other name to refer to him or her, and you might begin to see that some people do have strong emotional reasons for their word preferences.
A concept like “mental illness” is used to serve mainly a pragmatic purpose, though in time it may begin to pick up some negative emotional associations that pack a pretty nasty punch in the gut. So, with this in mind, let’s take a few minutes to examine the pros and cons of using these mental illness-type concepts. But first, a brief tour of the health care system will set the stage for our pros and cons discussion.
Brief Background History
For centuries people who were financially well off went to doctors that specialize in treating physical ailments. For those who had money merely for food and housing, home remedies substituted for professional care. Some of these poor folks saw themselves getting worse and worse and ended up desperately crying out for help at hospital emergency rooms.
This presented a moral dilemma for physicians. On the one hand, treating these poor souls for free would save lives. On the other hand, their hospital would be unable to economically survive because it’s expensive to provide treatments for free.
Advocates for moral physicians, the poor, and hospital administrators struggled with this for years. Eventually, the idea came about in most developed countries that the government could create an insurance program that would have all tax payers pay an affordable increase in taxes and this would fund health care at no extra cost for all of its citizens whenever any of them become sick.
Despite most developed countries upon actually trying this approach and discovering it is a workable solution, the United States decision makers set up an alternative that had private insurance companies offer policies to people who could afford its premiums. This expanded to some degree the number of people who were able to access healthcare.
Poorer people, however, could not afford these premiums, and continued to show up at emergency rooms. When hospital administrators pressed for payment, an enormous amount of people ended up bankrupt, while hospitals found the legal bureaucratic process of bankrupt proceedings taxing and financially problematic.
In time, advocates of some doctors, hospital administrators, and the poor increased the availability of healthcare through political action that led to the passage of some aspects of the Medicaid and Medicare programs. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, even more people can now afford insurance premiums.
So, there you have it, the essential background information needed to consider the pros and cons of the pathologizing and psychiatrizing mental illness concept. In our next section, the concept’s perceived benefits shall be presented. As you read it, please remain mindful that not everyone agrees that each of these perceived pros are indeed pros, especially when long term consequences are taken into account. That being said, bear with me as I temporarily skip over these richly complicating issues until we reach the subsequent “Cons” section.
Pros
The two main pros to the mental illness concept are, 1. connecting the concept to the notion of illness helps to increase access to needed services and 2. it reduces stigma, blame, and guilt.
Increasing Access to Support Services
While all of the health care changes I discussed above were going on, there were individuals who were experiencing concerns regarding their level of distress, dysfunction, abnormal feelings, or behavior. Some went to their clergy for guidance, and this continues to this day. Others who could afford it, went to their medical doctor. Typically, when nothing physically wrong could be found to explain their patients’ concerns, doctors had little to offer other than unsupported theories such as pathological glands, toxic substances in their blood, chemical imbalances, or brain neurology. Often, placebo pills or sedatives were prescribed along with a few kind words of encouragement. 
However, some doctors took a special interest in just these types of concerns, and began to specialize in treating these patients, calling themselves psychiatrists.
Initially these psychiatrists claimed that because these concerns were due to real illnesses they were the only ones who should be permitted to legally diagnose and treat these types of patients. To bolster their argument, they referred to their patients with medical sounding terminology. Their treatments at first consisted largely with what they called psychotherapy, which was a specialized conversation. Later, lobotomies, new pills, and electroconvulsive treatments were added.
In the last few decades, other professionals, such as psychologists, counselors, life coaches, and social workers began to compete with psychiatrists in providing conversation-type services to this group of people at significantly lower hourly rates. Psychiatrists, realizing they were the only professionals that could legally prescribe drugs, began to focus on the pill prescribing side of treatment. The pharmaceutical industry, for their part, came up with some pills that were marketed as “antidepressants,” “anti-anxiety medications,” and “antipsychotics.”
To expand their client base, psychiatrists along with the powerful pharmaceutical lobby, made the case that since these mental illnesses were illnesses the insurance industry and government agencies should offer health insurance plans that covered mental illness treatments. When this succeeded, two other mental health services providers–licensed psychologists and mental health counselors–provided research findings indicating their psychotherapy approaches offered relief to those viewed as having a mental illness. Decision makers became convinced, and in recent years, more and more health insurance plans are including coverage for a limited number of psychotherapy sessions.
This increased access to treatment to a wider number of folks, and in the United States, advocates were able, through the Social Security Administration, to provide additional types of support for people it refers to as having a “serious mental illness.” Its Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs provide funds and help with housing.
So, one of the major perceived pros of the mental illness concept is that by tying psychological concerns to the concept of illness, it probably made it easier to convince decision makers to expand access to services for those struggling with these challenges. Additionally, for psychiatrists, other mental health service providers, and the pharmaceutical industry, their businesses have flourished.
Reducing Guilt and Blame
The mental illness concept, it has been argued, reduces for many parents feelings of guilt when their offspring begins to develop mental health concerns. Interestingly, many in psychiatry initially were the ones who actually increased parental guilt despite utilizing the mental illness concept. They had argued that schizophrenia is caused by bad parents, and especially by bad mothers (see HERE for a scholarly review of these theories).
In brief, mothers of patients were presumed to have provided a lack of authentic love of their child. Schizophrenia, and depression, according to other psychiatrists blamed some of women’s psychological concerns on their fathers molesting them. 
And so parent advocacy groups such as the National Alliance On Mental Illness (NAMI) jumped on the notion that mental illnesses were blamelessly due to an illness like any other illness such as diabetes or cancer. Most current psychiatrists are supporting NAMI’s position.
Despite the biological approach having failed over decades to find a relevant brain lesion or source of infection, or to nail down the hereditary nature of conditions referred to as mental illnesses, the “brain disease” idea still manages to alleviate parental guilt. It also alleviates the guilt of many patients who are told by people close to them that they should just snap out of whatever is concerning them. “You can’t just snap out of cancer, can you?” these patients argue. “My doctor says I have a real illness like any other illness, and I am acting responsibly because I went to a doctor, got diagnosed, and I’m taking my prescriptions.”
So, there you have it, the main perceived pros of the mental illness concept. By incorporating the word “illness” in naming this concept, which had already successfully helped to increase access for physical illness services, it appears to have eased the way to convince decision makers to provide access to services to address psychological concerns. Moreover, parents of the mentally ill labelled patients, along with the patients themselves, found that believing these concerns were illnesses like any other illnesses reduced their sense of guilt.
Cons
In seeking to weigh the pros of the mental illness concept with its cons, let’s break this task into four parts–1. insurance and government services issues, 2. illogic of trying to equate mental illness with physical illness, 3. psychiatric treatments causing more harm than good, and 4. confusing guilt with responsibility.
Insurance and Government Services Issues:
As mentioned above, one can theorize that the mental illness concept made it easier for insurance executives and government decision makers to agree to support providing services to people dealing with psychological concerns. In thinking about this, let’s first consider what really happens in the insurance industry when these types of decisions are made.
Long before mental illness policies were added to health policies, insurance companies had been offering policies that required no required illness connection. Examples of this are car insurance, theft insurance, flood insurance, etc.
In deciding to offer a policy to customers, insurance companies simply use actuary data to decide how much to charge people so the premiums would provide a profit. This is what they actually have done when deciding how much to charge for a policy that provides coverage for those who receive a “mental disorder diagnosis.” So, logically, there is no actual need for insurance companies to see mental health concerns as illnesses.
Some may argue that insurance executives, when considering whether or not to offer policies to people who are declared as having a mental illness probably first considered the following. By limiting services to just folks whose concerns are serious enough to warrant a mental disorder diagnosis, this would keep the number of people accessing services to a more manageable level. Thus, the system would avoid becoming overloaded with clients, and insurance premiums would remain manageable.
However, here is the counter argument. Mental health service providers now using the current “diagnosis” approach are not turning anyone away who has mental health insurance coverage. Professionals are in the business of increasing their clients. The current “diagnosis” system is so vague that anyone currently seeking services are easily provided with some “diagnosis” regardless of their expressed psychological concern.
So, with regards to the question, Was it easier for insurance executives to decide to offer policies that provide mental health support services because of the mental illness concept, there is really little logical support for this. How about for government decision makers? Again, we find example after example that the government provides support for reasons other than illness. The Federal Emergence Management Agency (FEMA) funds are used 
when an earthquake or flood devastates a community. Local, state, and federal funds are used to provide extra services to school age students who fall academically significantly below average. No illness connection is required to convince anyone that these kinds of services are in the best interest for our communities.
So, in conclusion, when insurance executives or government officials decide whether funds are to be used to provide assistance to people, employing a concept that includes the idea of an illness is simply not a necessity.
The Illogic of Equating Mental Illness
With Physical Illness
A diagnosis of a physical illness requires the doctor observing the presence of a physical pathology. A diagnosis of a mental illness occurs when the doctor does not find any evidence of the presence of a physical pathology such as a virus infecting the body, an MRI identifying an internal lesion, etc. There is no actual diagnosis when a psychiatrist says he or she has made a mental illness diagnosis. The doctor simply has a conversation with the patient and assigns what is referred to as a diagnosis despite research studies indicating this type of classification system lacks reliability and validity.
Rather than using an “illness” metaphor to convince insurance companies and government decision makers to provide support services for the concerns now being addressed by them, it would be more logical to refer to these concerns as “mental health” concerns and develop a classification around this concept. The word “health” in such a classification system would be used to provide the logical argument that professionals dealing with mental health concerns are part of the allied health professions. The reason for thinking of these professionals as health providers follows:
For example, people who express a concern about being addicted to alcohol are at increased risk of developing sclerosis of the liver (O’Shea, Dasarathy, & McCullough, 2010). Those who express concerns about eating more than average may be at greater risk of diabetes and heart disease (Mokdad et al., 2003). Quality of interpersonal relations, lack of sleep, depression with thoughts of suicide, and various other concerns or clusters of concerns can be studied for the degree of physical health risk that they pose.The Mental Illness Concept Encourages Medical-type Treatments For Mental Health Concerns, Which has Led to More Harm than Good
According to the scientific evidence, the types of services that have come about as a result of medicalizing these types of concerns with “mental illnesses” terminology, has been far more harmful than health promoting. Medical doctors, which include psychiatrists, think of treatments chiefly in terms of surgery and medicines. Early in the psychiatric profession the surgical operation that it came up with was referred to as lobotomies.
First introduced in the 1930s, this highly traumatic brain procedure was once seen as a miracle cure for mental illness. But it soon became apparent that many patients lost their ability to feel emotions and became apathetic, unengaged, and unable to concentrate. Some became catatonic, and a few even died. After a few years it became clear it resulted in far more cons than pros, and has since been discarded.
The medical profession of psychiatry has now turned to the treatment option of prescribing “antidepressant, “anti-anxiety,” and “antipsychotic” pills. As it turns out, when the long term effects of consuming these pills is considered, overwhelming evidence indicates far more harm than good (see HERE). In brief, data indicate rising disability rates since these drugs became the standard treatment. Standard mortality rates for schizophrenia and bipolar patients have worsened as well. Long-term studies tell of higher recovery rates for schizophrenia patients off medication. There is evidence that tells of how depression has been transformed from an episodic disorder into a chronic condition in the “antidepressant” era.
Why, then, do so many people who have received this type of treatment report that they are being helped by them? It has to do with how most psychoactive drugs create the illusion that they are helpful (see HERE, and HERE). The best way to understand how this illusion is created, is to consider how people come to believe smoking cigarettes help them to deal with their stress. Thus, in a study published in the American Psychologist, researchers found the following:
Smokers often report that cigarettes help relieve feelings of stress. However, the stress levels of adult smokers are slightly higher than those of nonsmokers, adolescent smokers report increasing levels of stress as they develop regular patterns of smoking, and smoking cessation leads to reduced stress. Far from acting as an aid for mood control, nicotine dependency seems to exacerbate stress. This is confirmed in the daily mood patterns described by smokers, with normal moods during smoking and worsening moods between cigarettes. Thus, the apparent relaxant effect of smoking only reflects the reversal of the tension and irritability that develop during nicotine depletion. Dependent smokers need nicotine to remain feeling normal. The message that tobacco use does not alleviate stress but actually increases it needs to be far more widely known.
This same process is largely the reason why people become addicted to other substances, such as alcohol, caffeine, illegal drugs, and the drugs that psychiatrists prescribe. They all create the illusion that the pills improve their functioning initially through a placebo effect. Then, once their bodies adapt to the drug, each time they haven’t taken the drug for a few hours, they begin to experience a withdrawal effect that they attribute to their mental health concern returning. When they take their next pill, their relief from the withdrawal effect abating is experienced as pleasant, and with that, the illusion has been accomplished. For many people, it is only by gradually withdrawing from these addicted substances can one safely recover from this type of addiction (see HERE for support to safely withdraw from these drugs).
Confusing Guilt With Responsibility
As for the belief that framing mental health concerns as an illness like any other illness reduces blame and feelings of guilt, this too is an illusion. Despite this belief, many people continue to blame parents for their offspring acting in certain socially unacceptable ways and they continue to blame the patients as well (see HERE). By the way, many also feel guilty when they get certain physical illnesses. For example, tobacco related illnesses often are met with a regretful twinge.
Even if no immediate promising ideas come from a particular episode of spending time in this way, taking responsibility involves keeping hope alive. This means that you recognize that with particularly challenging situations, it takes an extended time to fully address such concerns. In the coming days, new, fresh ideas may yet come your way, or the situations that brought about the concerns may change in unexpected ways to your advantage. In contrast to acting responsibly, experiencing guilt when feeling anxious or grief becomes an aversive experience. The mental illness label pathologizes the concern, but there is a potential of improving one’s life with the experiences that get these illness conceptualizations.
Taking responsibility for one’s concerns, in my opinion, involves welcoming these experiences, kind of like you might a friend, for these experiences enrich our lives if handled responsibly. If you have something more pressing to take care of for a short period of time, it can make sense to gently delay your interaction with whatever anxiety and grief you have to deal with until a more convenient time. However, the responsible thing to do is to soon invite these experiences back so you can spend some time to work through these types of concerns. Daily meditation, quiet walks in natural environments, and journal writing, are free and ideal ways to do this.
Wow, this post has gotten quite a bit longer than I intended. I think I’ll give it a rest at this point. With that, I bid you a warm adieu.
My Best,
Jeff
Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today, we take up a country-wide emotionally charged conflict between those who believe the Second Amendment allows for what they refer to as some “reasonable restrictions” of arms such as banning AR-15 weapons, and those who believe the amendment provides an inalienable right to own arms with absolutely “no restrictions.” Here’s what the Second Amendment actually states:
The Second Amendment begins by explaining the necessity for the amendment–“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” Here we see that the reason why the Framers included this amendment to the Constitution was because of the specific needs of a well regulated militia. This explaining is very different than the other amendments which give no explanation for each of them because each are viewed as “self evident.” For example, consider the wording of the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Also notice that this amendment allows for the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Thus, you can’t have people who formed a militia violently attacking the Government with arms and then successfully claim that since it was carried out by a well regulated militia your use of these arms is constitutionally protected. As a result of the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capital, over 800 people have been charged for crimes for their violent acts and more indictments are forthcoming.
Like the First Amendment, the Third Amendment, provides no explanation. Given this “no explanation” style in the other amendments as well, we are left wondering why the Second Amendment veers away from this “no explanation” style. If the Framers just wanted to say all people have the right to carry and bear arms, they could have left out the first part of the amendment that refers to a well regulated militia, and instead have written:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people in a Militia to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
This theory is supported by the fact that the Framers were not typically given to providing explanations for why the people have the rights enumerated in the Constitution, and yet they chose to include one in the Second Amendment. Moreover the Framers were clear that only peaceful means could be used to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Bearing arms at such events runs counter to this peaceful intent. Thus, the Framers did not view the bearing of arms as an absolute right, limiting its use when assembling, and petitioning the government. Finally, there are other clauses in the Constitution that in practice are not absolute, and reasonable modifications to their wording have occurred.
People who had access to a handgun could only fire a single shot before reloading. People who had access to a long barrel gun had muskets. A musket fired a single lead ball before it needed to be reloaded to fire another. Black powder was the explosive material used which commonly fouled the musket after repeated firing and they were notoriously inaccurate when aimed at a target. Reloading required that a person carry out the following steps:
Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications…applies to modern forms of speech… the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.
Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.
It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.
NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & 
The Second Amendment guaranteed to “all Americans” the right to bear commonly used arms in public subject to certain reasonable, well-defined restrictions, Heller, 554 U. S., at 581. Those restrictions, for example, limited the intent for which one could carry arms, the manner by which one carried arms, or the exceptional circumstances under which one could not carry arms, such as before justices of the peace and other government officials.
In Justice Alito’s concurring opinion, he wrote, “Our holding decides nothing about who may lawfully possess a firearm or the requirements that must be met to buy a gun. Nor does it decide anything about the kinds of weapons that people may possess.”
With regards to the Supreme Court’s decision concerning the type of weapon permitted for self protection, the only weapon mentioned is hand guns. As far as what is permitted with regards to obtaining such weapons, and what other weapons could be used, it states it is subject to certain well defined restrictions.
One set of arguments against the Supreme Court’s decision utilizes well documented statistics indicating the harms of having so many weapons in the hands of people. For example, the Violence Policy Center, in 2015, provided statistics that showed that in 2012, there were 259 justifiable self-defense homicides in which victims turned the tables on the assailant. However, the Center also reported these 259 justifiable homicides should be balanced against the statistics indicating the thefts of about 232,000 guns each year. That’s a ratio of one justifiable homicide for every 896 guns put into the hands of criminals.
Moreover, researchers from Boston University investigated the relationship between gun ownership and gun homicides from 1981-2010 in all 50 states. They said they found a “robust correlation” between the two factors. “This research is the strongest to date to document that states with higher levels of gun ownership have disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides.”
Here we see that countries with far more gun restriction than the United States have a small fraction of gun homicide rates. United Kingdom and Japan, which have the strictest gun restrictions have the tiniest fraction of such homicides. Meanwhile, nearly 
Now, keep in mind, if you will, that the reason given by the Supreme Court is for self-protection. The AR-15 weapon is way too dangerous for such a purpose. If one shoots at an assailant in an apartment, the shot can penetrate not only through a wall into a neighbor’s apartment, but right through another wall into another apartment, thus endangering the life there. Moreover, shooting at someone with this weapon outside, risks killing someone more than 200 yards away who happens to be in the line of fire.
Armed bystanders who are not security guards or off-duty police officers successfully ending a violent attack is a very rare occurrence according to the relevant data summarized by the 
After shooting 471 people at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas from a hotel room overlooking the festival, the gunman died by suicide before the police arrived to his room. The gunman was in no way defending himself against the victims who were innocently enjoying a music concert. More recently, we have seen the aftermath of one massacre after another in which the shooters used AR-15 guns that occurred in a supermarket, school buildings, and many other places.
But the empirical judgment regarding this issue is not at all difficult. It is backed up by overwhelming evidence that more access to guns in a given population leads to far more deaths. Moreover, there have been zero cases of non-law enforcement officials ever successfully using an AR-15 for self defense, or in defense of other citizens, while that same weapon has been used to murder numerous innocent fellow citizens.
Just as I was finishing up this post, a 
Such incidents, which are up 19 percent this year, has led police departments around the country to be among the 
Welcome to From Insults To Respect. Today’s post offers an approach for respectfully helping someone experiencing hopelessness during a first-hour counseling session. I commend it to you for I have found it remarkably helpful over my many years providing counseling services.
However, there are some who will not be able to do so because they have very little patience in the presence of anyone feeling hopeless. Such persons might cry out, “Enough with this helplessness crap. Snap out of it and get the hell on with your life for crying out loud!”
That said, it just so happens that some people who begin with the lack of sympathy approach end up seeing it has been far from helpful. They may yet be left harboring some desire to be helpful in some way. If they didn’t end up completely severing any subsequent relationship with the person feeling helpless as a result of their demanding approach, they might, through a turn of mind, come to say, “Well, I guess I have the ability to try a more supportive approach.” Such persons might still be able to utilize the Jamesian approach.
The first two types of situations one can utilize this approach involves a professional counselor or psychotherapist. The client arrives for an appointment. The professional then begins the session by asking the client, “What concerns would you like us to address?” The despondent person might reply,
“I’ve been feeling stressed out and hopeless and I heard I might qualify for disability benefits. I can sure use the extra money.”
You begin by asking the person you hope to help, in a soft, caring manner, “How have you been doing?” Over the course of the next half hour, your job is to listen with all the empathy you can muster, to whatever your counselee wants to share with you.
Listening in a sympathetic manner during the first half hour is time well spent. During this time you will be modeling for the counselee an alternative to how he or she might want to respond to the situations that currently has been leading to angrily insulting oneself. People learn a great deal by observing others. Your job in this first half hour is to be a superb model of reacting to very human mistakes by remaining supportive to the notion that we all goof-up from time to time.
“I’d like to pause here for just a few minutes, if that is ok with you. I would like to tell you a story that many people who are going through a similar experience as you, find helpful. In referring to these experiences as similar to you, I recognize each person’s experience is unique. That said, with us being fellow humans, we can often see certain similarities that might help us make some useful connections with our own unique situation. So, would it be ok if we pause here just for a few minutes so I can tell you this story?”
But as a young man of 25, while studying for his Harvard medical degree, he suddenly dropped out. As he explained the reason, “it was as if something hitherto solid within my breast gave way entirely, and I became a mass of quivering fear. . . . I awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread in the pit of my stomach.”
He said several things: the reading of Renouvier (specially his vindication of the freedom of the will) and Wordsworth, whom he has been feeding on now for a good while; but especially his having given up the notion that all mental disorder is required to have a physical basis. This had become perfectly untrue to him. He saw that the mind did act irrespectively of material coercion, and could be dealt with therefore at first-hand, and this was health to his bones.
We see in the above that at this time James had viewed his distressful experience that led to his departure from medical school as a “mental disorder” that he had to accept as due to something wrong with his body and therefore he could do nothing but accept that he had this condition. Then, his conceptualization began to develop from a physiological pathology model to one that gives at least some freedom to the will.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
This exuberance with being in nature, for Wordsworth, spilled over into his life even when he was not in nature as we see in the following lines:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
Later in his life, William James added another element to his understanding of the disturbing experiences he had as a young man. It was prompted by a quarrel.
But it breaks down importantly as soon as melancholy comes; and even though one be quite free from melancholy one’s self, there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
To James, people confront events daily that create feelings of helplessness, pain, sadness, horror, and dread. James argued that the feelings that go along with these kinds of events can lead toward truth. Thus, he counteracts any tendency to assume that those referred to as morbid-minded are automatically inferior to those referred to as “mentally healthy.”
Through being counseled by reading the writings of Renouvier (specially his vindication of the freedom of the will), along with discovering the health promoting effects of spending time in nature and with some people who shared his developing love of nature, he found this was health to his bones. As the years went by, he came to understand that there can be some benefits that come from the experiences many so called healthy-minded people view as morbid-mindedness or, more frequently in today’s culture, “mental illness.”
Here this ten-minute story ends. At its conclusion, gently ask if your counselee would like to share any thoughts or feelings that came about upon hearing about William James’s experiences and ideas about what people today often refer to as having a mental illness. Then, in the few minutes left of the hour, begin again to listen in the caring manner I described above.
Consider a press conference held by Senate Republicans this past July. At that time, they blamed the “insane tax and spending spree of President Biden and the Democrats for six straight months of raging inflation.”
As another example, on 3/10/22 I read this tweet by Florida Republican 
Story 1: Last summer I was in the mood to play a round of golf, so I checked the weather report. Seeing there was only a twenty percent chance of rain, I called three of my friends to see if they wanted to join me, informing them of the most recent weather report. They agreed to play.
We put our heads together, and finally got to the game, but only after the second inning. Obviously, the driver was largely responsible for our being late, although any one of us could have double checked the directions, rather than just assume the driver was not mistaken. In any case, after a few good natured teasing comments, all of us hastened to be supportive of our driver friend, saying things like, “Hey, everyone makes mistakes,” and then sharing incidents in which we were late because we had gotten lost in the past. I respect how we handled the situation.
Dismayed at the blaming of Biden, whom I do believe is trying to do his best during terribly tough circumstances, I did some research on the causes of the current inflation situation. Checking multiple sources, which are readily available for anyone really interested in this issue, this is what I found.
Supply Chain Issues: By all accounts that I can find, shortly after the pandemic struck, and before Biden was sworn in as president, the annual inflation rate for most American purchases had already risen to the highest level in a decade.
Moreover, rising inflation isn’t just hitting the US. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, inflation among its 38 member states is heading higher. As 
Lack Of Real Competition: About two-thirds of the largest publicly traded US companies reported fatter profit margins in the first nine months of 2021 compared with the same period in 2020, 
Challenging Problem for the Feds: The department in the Federal Government that has the responsibility to guide the US through troubled waters is the Federal Reserve System. Among its most central roles is to promote the effective operation of the U.S. economy and, more generally, the public interest. It conducts the nation’s monetary policy to promote maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates in the U.S. economy.
Jerome Powell, with impressive credentials, is the chair person of this system. Nominated for the position by former President Donald Trump in 2018, he was confirmed by Democrat and Republican Senators by an 84 to 13 vote. He is still serving in that position under President Biden.
The last time the US had a serious inflation problem began in the mid-1970s and ran through the mid-1980s. It threw the country into a recession and unemployment rose to over 10 percent. The national debt at that time was less than 1 trillion dollars. At least with the current bout with inflation, unemployment is currently below 4 precent.
First, his tax cut that wasn’t matched with any spending cuts led to a trillion dollar increase in the national debt the following year, as was predicted by all of the major economists. Then came the pandemic during his administration and he quickly signed into law a $2.2 trillion relief package, followed by a $900 billion relief package. When we combine the increase in debt from Trump’s tax program with his pandemic relief spending, we come up with over 4 trillion dollars. All of this money sloshed into the economy before Biden took the oath of office.
His proposal, as expressed during his State of the Union Address, involves capping the cost of insulin to $35 a month and letting Medicare negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs. Child care cost, that has been weighing heavily on families, would be cut in half for most families. This would help parents, including millions of women, who left the workforce during the pandemic because they couldn’t afford child care, to be able to get back to work. The enhanced Child Tax Credit, which was beefed up for 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, would be extended.
Back in 2019, I criticized the use of “antipsychotics” and on Facebook someone criticized what I had written saying, “all of the research clearly indicates that the “antipsychotics,” when used by people diagnosed as having schizophrenia, decrease the risk of dying.” I then, very respectfully, asked that he supply me with the references that he is relying on to make his assertion, and within a very brief period, he did just that.
Mental health services have advanced in many parts of the world during the past few decades. Apart from a different mix of community-based care, the introduction of the second-generation antipsychotic medications [also referred to as atypical antipsychotics] in the early 1990s was initially found to be associated with better quality of life and reduced risk of relapse.
I don’t know where this person obtained his list, but it appeared to me, as I began to study it, that it was probably made by a pharmaceutical industry salesperson who goes to doctors’ offices to convince them to prescribe their drugs. I say this because there are articles on the list that had titles that sounded like they were relevant, but when reading them, they were not. For example, the first study on my critic’s list was published in The Lancet in 2018, and titled “
However, if you read just the abstract of the article, as many practitioners do because time reading research studies is not billable, you would find no mention of this statistically significant finding, a finding that could have life saving implications.
The song was released as a single in the summer of 1965 and rocketed to the number 1 spot, as Beatles songs were apt to do. John Lennon passionately sings lead vocals, while getting ample help from his bandmates Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.
(Help!) I need somebody
First, according to his own statements quoted in various biographies, John received quite a bit of help from his Aunt Mimi while he was growing up. 
Second, John, when he was younger, invited Paul to join his band presumably because he felt Paul could be helpful. So, he not only got a great deal of help when he was younger, he specifically asked Paul for help. The song’s lyrics up to this point do not reflect this. The puzzle is solved by discovering that John, in the song, is not referring to needing just any type of help. Instead, he is referring to needing one particular type of help, as we learn in the next verse.
Help me if you can, I’m feeling down
In John’s culture, young folks liked viewing themselves as tough and never needing any emotional help. Asking for assistance for this type of problem could be viewed as being a sissy. Given this cultural attitude, it was rather brave of him to come out with a song such as this.
It was quite an eye opener to me as a boy growing up in Brooklyn. Being the toughest person around was viewed as the ideal. To learn that John could not only boldly reveal feelings of being insecure, and yet he continued to be adored by his fans, meant something important to me.
It led many of us to become aware we are not alone upon having similar feelings. It also reveals that asking for help need not mean we will end up being disrespected. However, as the opening lines of the song suggest, we might not want to ask just anyone for help. How then, do we pick the right person for this type of assistance? Although the song succeeds in raising this enormously important issue, it leaves us to seek out the answer for ourselves.
In it, Dustin Hoffman is playing a character named Ted Kramer who is going through a tough divorce. Because his boss had been a caring and good listener in the past, whenever Ted discussed work related concerns, Ted chooses to share with him how down he is as a result of going through the divorce process. 
His boss tries to sound interested, but inwardly is bored. As Ted continues over the course of several days to share his emotional difficulties with his boss, more and more boredom arises and he begins to doubt that Ted is going to be able to handle his job responsibilities as well as he had in the past. Ted ends up getting fired.