Mental Health Month Day #13 “Dying in secret”

This is the most personally honest & difficult post I have written.

Body Dysmorphia / Anorexia / Bulimia / Dieting / Shame / Overweight / Underweight / Orthorexic

For many, dealing with ‘real world problems’ an eating disorder or unhealthy relationship with food or self-image, is going to seem vain, unnecessary, small-minded and petty. If you’re one of those people, reading this won’t be interesting.

For the rest of us who at some point or another have experienced one or more of the above and/or been close to someone who has, this has a real world relevance and to dismiss it as a ‘rich white girls disease’ is to ignore the many people who die indirectly or directly or get sicker, every year. What good is shaming someone if you perceive their ‘problem’ not to be worthy enough for inclusion?

Let’s assume for a moment, any eating disorder or body-image issue, IS taken seriously and isn’t derided, insulted, demeaned and made fun of. Let’s assume people feel they CAN talk about it without pretending they have no idea what it is, because of fear of being judged and told; ‘Get a REAL problem rather than a made-up one!’ Tell that to the kids who die in hospital EVERY DAY from issues related to body-image.

It’s easy isn’t it? To condemn someone and say they’re petty and vain for having any type of body image disorder. Do you imagine they chose that life? That they want to be held hostage by a strange madness that seizes their otherwise rational faculties and enslaves them?

I’m not going to say vanity cannot play a part, but the vast majority of kids and adults who experience this of both genders because it affects men and trans also, feel this way because of a build up of reasons not just self-consciousness about the way they physically look. We can prove this though we should not have to, by showing the relationship between parents with eating disorders and their off-spring and the increase in likelihood their off-spring will go on to develop some kind of eating disorder. Likewise this is true even when that off-spring is adopted away from their family. In other words, it’s not just socially learned – some of it is inherited/biological.

The most recent body-issue out there is Orthorexia, and it’s trending because it has formed around a phobic over-response to the ideals of health and the fears of ‘bad’ food that dominate our society. Orthorexics will literally fear eating certain types of food because of everything written about them. For example if we took the various guidance of health gurus we would not eat; Any gluten, any fried food, any sugar, any non-organic produce, any alcohol, any dairy. We’d be left with rice-crackers, seaweed, vegetables and apple puree. Yum.

It may seem absurd, or an over-reaction but if you take health seriously it is easy to develop without intending to, a phobia of eating most foods because of this. You feel everything you eat is bad for you, so why eat it? You only want to eat things that are good for you and if you cannot then you skip eating. You may not be able to afford to eat what you want to eat and that presents problems as well as finding it hard to socialize because of your restricted diet.

More people than ever before have ‘restricted’ diets. Maybe they are gluten-intolerant, allergic to dairy, celiac, have a peanut allergy, are on a diet, have diabetes etc. Many menus calorie count, some break down the fats and ingredients. It is easy to obsess more than ever, and social media fuels this. There are sites devoted to this and other extremes as well as an increase in hard-core fitness programs that exclude many foods.

When someone has a tendency toward obsessing over this, maybe due to a pre-existing condition like body-dysmorphia, it’s not hard to become Orthorexic and fear eating a lot of food. The hard part is because it’s based upon health, it’s hard to find a healthy way of quitting being Orthorexic. How can you tell someone, eat less healthy food sometimes! The jury is still out on the ‘cure’ for this, but usually it comes to a crisis point and the sufferer realizes they are being controlled and they either embrace that and continue or let it go a bit and become less fanatical about how and what they eat. But it is not easy.

Anorexia is the fear of eating and the equating of food with weight-gain and negative feelings/experiences. Anorexics may eat but they often avoid it and limit their intake. Some purge afterward. They usually lose weight sufficiently that people will begin to notice. At first they are praised for being so ‘beach body ready’ and later on when they begin to grow hair on their skin as an extreme response to starvation they are made fun of. Anorexics have the highest risk of dying due to the lower rates of a ‘cure’ and they are often hospitalized.

Bulimia is characterized by bingeing and purging or even simply throwing up after eating. Typically a bulimic has many of the attributes of an anorexic and may starve themselves also or be an anorexic who purges. Other times they may purge but not necessarily lose sufficient weight to be seen to be anorexic although health-wise they are at great risk because of the strain throwing up does to our heart. Combined with inadequate nutrition and the strain of throwing up typical side-effects include broken veins in the face and hands, digestive disease and scarring, tooth decay and stomach problems.

Many people with eating disorders are on a ‘spectrum’ that doesn’t fit the absolute diagnosis of one specific disease, they are considered to have an eating disorder and then it is characterized individually.

Over eaters / binge eaters – an eating disorder characterized by over-eating to cope with stress much like anorexia that is heightened by anxiety and stress. Over-eating can include periods of extreme denial and starvation, it can also include purging. Over-eating can cause fluctuations of weight that put pressure on vital organs, and also can be a very isolating disease with a higher risk for suicide for all types of eating disorders. Sufferers may also gain extreme amounts of weight and suffer the judgement and ridicule that many over-weight or large people suffer because of our societies obsession with lower weights and their stigmatization of ‘fat’

Working out – Sometimes people who work out to lose weight or become fit can become obsessed with it. Whilst not always connected to an eating disorder, this can relate closely to body dysmorphia and shares the ‘control’ factor crucial in all eating and body disorders because it is thought, they all seek to control their surroundings because they do not feel they are in control in other ways.

Body dysmorphia is not an eating disorder but it can lead to, cause or exacerbate an eating disorder. Body dysmorphia is the incorrect transmission of an image of oneself. You can see a photograph, a mirror reflection, a film, of your body and you will not see your body the way others do.

How is that possible?

I have no idea. It seems absolutely impossible. I would NEVER believe it IF I had not A. Experienced it directly and personally B. Known so many others who did C. Professionally worked with many who did. Just like those who are not raped cannot always understand how life-changing rape can be, we seem to struggle to empathize and understand unless we have directly experienced it, which is sad.

To some extent it seems like a delusional disorder, or type of madness. I mean if you think you look a certain way but do not, how can you see yourself physically that way?

And yet you do.

People suffering from any of the above, often have other conditions such as anxiety, low self-esteem, they may be survivors of sexual abuse, they may have been raped, they may be being bullied. Depression Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar are other co-morbid conditions that often occur simultaneously. The secretive life of someone with this can be so secretive nobody ever knows they suffered.

Any type of eating disorder is pretty hard to ‘cure’ it was once thought Anorexia could never be cured it could be lived with. Nowadays anorexics and others, have access to treatment if they have the money for the often expensive treatment centers or if they are insured. Treatment can include hypnosis, group therapy, aversion and its opposite ‘exposure’ therapy, cognitive-behavioral and many other methods. Nobody knows the exact ‘cure’ rate but many go on to live healthy lives.

Then again like any addiction or disease, it is possible to switch one for the other. When someone who was say, formerly bulimic is ‘cured’ they may simply take their need for control and place it elsewhere. They may become obsessive-compulsive, they may generate more anxiety, they may take up smoking. It is important to look closely at this because some of the alternatives are as if not more dangerous.

Please note, this is the first time I have ever talked about my own experience in relation to eating disorders or body dysmorphia and my teeth are clenched because it’s like standing naked in public and goes against a history of being expert at hiding these things when they existed.

My friend and I had a secret group where we would binge, purge, starve. Eventually we stuck with starving because we felt badly for wasting food. At 16 a gym teacher said I needed to drop a few pounds, a dance teacher said the same thing and so I entered the world of starving for the sport, which many can relate to. At 17 I began swimming four times a week and during this time of a year, I didn’t starve myself, I was simply too hungry to! It felt great, I was free of the demon.

Except that’s never what happens. The reason we know such things are mental disorders is because they are inherited (children of anorexics have a higher risk) they exist irrespective of culture or income (yes, Hispanics and Blacks have eating disorders too, they were just ignored by the main-stream who believed it to be an Anglo middle-class disease, likewise with boys and men) and it’s usually deeply hidden and never talked about and is a form of delusion-disorder, you SEE things that are NOT there. IE: You are skinny and you see fat.

I can remember being in a dance class and watching all the tan girls in their leotards with their long legs and necks, so graceful and then looking down and seeing my inner thighs all flabby and squishy. It wasn’t true, they weren’t, but that is what I SAW. I remember being at a dinner party and suddenly running to the bathroom and throwing up everything I ate, and covering it expertly with a breath mint, nobody knew and it seemed like a super-power, in fact it was a sickness, an invisible and terribly destructive sickness invading my every thought.

At 18 after my boyfriend had left me, the old demon returned (a need to control) and I began to throw up whenever I ate until I was a dangerous weight. Few people knew, including my parents because I was excellent at hiding things related to my eating disorder. I went to college and in that first year it was the worst it was ever. I realized I was going out of my mind and it controlled me completely, I sought help. I went to a therapist about it and how it related to being abused as a child and other things that had happened in my life. This helped.

The main ‘cure’ of my eating disorder though was not what the magazines would like me to say. It wasn’t that I saw the light, I got better, I’m a shining example. Oh no.

I was ‘cured’ because I was in a relationship and I had nowhere to purge, or throw up after eating and I couldn’t not eat because I lived with four people and they would have noticed. there was only one bathroom, the house was small the walls paper-thin. After a while I realized I just couldn’t hide my disorder and as I was also sharing my bed and happy in my relationship I stopped.

That seems a pretty pathetic reason huh? I thought so.

It also wasn’t true, it was another layer of the delusion.That’s like an alcoholic not drinking in public, doesn’t mean they are not an alcoholic. People say, if it’s a disease you cannot control it, but who said that? Of course you can! You think you can anyway, but really it controls you. When I was alone, even for one night, I would stuff things in my mouth until I nearly burst and then throw up, or I would eat absolutely nothing or I would stare at myself and see something hideous. I didn’t and couldn’t talk about it because we all know what others would say. You are vain. You are shallow. You are pathetic. You cause this. You waste food. You deserve what you get. But it wasn’t vanity it was self-hatred and self-loathing, a desire to be that eight year old again, free of everything. I didn’t know why, I didn’t connect it to sexual abuse and other things that so often are the triggers and markers for at-risk youth to develop eating disorders.

But years later when I was single again I began to starve off and on. I saw that the ONLY thing keeping me from having a full-blown eating disorder again was circumstance! I wasn’t cured at all! I was simply living with the secrecy like a double-agent, patting myself on the back for my success when really it was underneath the surface controlling me. For someone who was so open and honest I was a huge liar, nobody knew, and the more they didn’t know, the more I couldn’t say.

HOW can we have so much control that if we live with someone else it may help and if we are alone we immediately fall back to it? How serious and real can it be then? I think it’s very serious and very real, imagine looking in the mirror and seeing someone who isn’t there! I still do. I cannot see the ‘real’ me in the mirror but what I try to do is surround myself with people who eat healthily but normally, and ensure that I don’t let ‘the voices’ lure me back into bad habits.

I have slipped a few times, notably in times of high stress. I realize for some it is impossible to live with the disease relatively well, for some they are so sick they really do benefit from more intensive treatment and/or hospitalization. I was never as sick as some of the girls (and one boy) whom I knew with eating disorders but that doesn’t mean I was well either. After a very serious bad experience I fell back into starving myself the denial felt redemptive, in my twenties I felt I was far too old to be doing this, and yet I was (many anorexics are over forty, everyone assumes they are 18, the age-bias means many do not ever get treatment). That year I went to visit school friends back in Europe, they all told me how unhealthy I looked, how I had no chest, no flesh, and I felt like I lived with a chimera inside of me, dictating this awful tendency to reduce everything to controlling how much I ate.

In our society if we perceive a disease to be ‘chosen’ or ‘self-selected’ and the person had a choice, then we blame the person who has that disease. We say “I’m not going to understand this disease or empathize because I blame you for causing it, therefore it’s not like a disease you didn’t cause.” What we fail to understand is, while we judge, we judge a far wider number of people who witness that judgement and thus, never seek help, we also instill a sense in the disease-sufferer that their disease is a choice, a bad habit, and their fault. In other words we compound the problem all because we condemn people for something we don’t understand. How many times have you heard someone say; “Those damn anorexic models I have no sympathy for them” We believe that kind of illness is essentially a weakness of character or worse, enviable and thus, we resent them. Would we say that if someone disclosed they had ovarian cancer?

I use my own example because I have NEVER publically talked about having an eating disorder before. I would say it’s a lot like being an alcoholic, you are ALWAYS an alcoholic just like you are always someone with a potential for eating disorders. I did go down the road of Orthorexia and left to my own devices would be merrily heading down it now (except it’s not merry, it’s ridiculous and it’s crazy) and equally I still have body dysmorphia. I can only believe that by admitting this as I have here, I encourage others to get treatment. I personally found therapy very helpful and the other thing that helped was ensuring I took the right vitamins and minerals to balance myself and become less unhinged which I was exacerbating by poor nutrition. It is a vicious circle.

It is very hard for me to recount this, I have tried to delete this several times, feeling that if it gets ‘out there’ I will lose control and I realize, that’s what I have to do and what we all have to do if we experience these feelings. For a long time I could not hang out with people with eating disorders, they triggered me. I am such an independent person ask anyone but when it comes to eating I’m not at all I’m a complete follower and that baffles me. I still struggle to eat when I’m alone or at dinner parties, there are things I will always have and need to always remind myself I have, to face them and not deny them, because then they win.

The grand irony is, I have always been genetically thin, so even if I never had this, I would have been picked on for being underweight, and that’s the farce of it, you can look any way and nobody really knows what’s going on for you, they accuse you of being anorexic when you’re not, and commend you for having a good figure when you’re starving yourself, the mixed-messages of our society increase our propensity to be sick.

For some they are genetically wired to not respond to those triggers, whilst others are genetically engineered to respond to them, recent studies show there is a definitive link between DNA and the development of any type of eating disorder. Therefore it’s not all in your head and it is all in your head. But for years we were told it was the spoilt princess syndrome, would that make anyone want to admit it?

It is a form of madness I am certain of it, and as such it belongs in the mental health category almost more than anything else. Society does not help, the continual bombardment of thin bodies really doesn’t help. I have been told I was thin my entire life, and I realize, thin doesn’t even MATTER it’s not IMPORTANT and I don’t even find really thin women attractive! Sometimes it’s not about wanting to be thin, in my case it never was, it was about seeking control and having a really bad relationship with food that was very love-hate. Personally I think bigger women are far more beautiful, proof that an eating disorder or body dysmorphia is not always about weight or thinness, although for some it is.

I had a fear of letting go of being a child, of growing up, of intimacy, of body-shame due to sexual abuse, of self-hate due to low-self-esteem. Those were my triggers, those were my things that led me to develop eating and body disorders. For others it may be the same or different. The thing we all share is a need to control what we feel we do not control – a feeling of being out of control. Sometimes people cut themselves, sometimes people do drugs, sometimes people control what they eat. Equally, if you do not see yourself accurately in the mirror this can be a manifestation of self-hate that was inculcated or indoctrinated and it can lead to a skewed self-image which is at the root of body dysmorphia.

I feel an intense embarrassment and shame at admitting this about myself. I know when I press ‘publish’ I will immediately regret this. And that’s why I’m doing it, because it’s time. Time to end the shame. If you read this and think I’m another white-middle-class-whiner who invents a disease, good day to you, but for those of you who ‘get’ what I’m saying here, I say to you, let’s talk about it, let’s get the monster out of the closet and get to the bottom of it, because the one thing that we hate most of all is admitting it and coming clean, that’s what we avoid at any cost, and that’s exactly why we must.

I’m sorry this is all about me, it was the only way I could find to truthfully tell the story.

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Mental Health Month Day #9 “Suicide”

Crossposted

The first time I was personally touched by suicide, a friend’s mom took her own life, her kids found her in the bath, I heard about it second-hand around the age of eight. I remember thinking how I would feel if I found a family member dead, and I tried to be nicer to my friend whose mom had died. I remember other kids said things about how the mom was selfish for doing it, I didn’t join in, there was even then, a part of me that didn’t see it that way.

The second time I was personally touched by suicide, my grandfather took his own life. He overdosed on Valium and was found the next morning when he hadn’t come down for breakfast. He was an artist and a long time Depressive, but despite that, everyone was shocked that a man still in his prime would consider death a better option. I remember people saying; “What a waste, he was so talented” and “How selfish, he had two children and a wife.” Although I didn’t think it at the time, I now wonder, does that mean it’s not selfish if you have no one? Is it more understandable or acceptable if you are not talented? Again, how things are phrased can stick with you.

At the time I saw my grandmother trying to come to terms with it. She ended up drinking the pain away, and developed an addiction to drinking for many years before she joined a cult and through this new-found sense of belonging quit drinking and became happy once more. Whilst we didn’t particularly like her being part of a cult we were glad for her restored peace of mind, but when I think back on it now, I also think we were relieved, we didn’t have to look in the face of grief anymore, everyone wanted to get on with things.

And that’s the hardest part of suicide, how people cope or do not cope after the fact.

Who is left behind, what fall-out carries on sometimes for generations.

One of the first questions a therapist asks is if anyone in your family has committed suicide, there is a reason for that. People whose family members commit suicide have a far higher risk of committing suicide themselves. Some have postulated whether this is ‘learned behavior’ or ‘permission granted’ or biological/in our DNA.

I can definitely see why people who have relatives who commit suicide would go one of two extremes. They are either going to be the last person to commit suicide, because they know first-hand its fall-out, or they may feel that because someone close to them did, it gives permission for them to follow suit. I can also see how some people are genetically at higher risk because something within their DNA makes it more favorable than for others. This doesn’t seem so very different from say, the God Gene.

There definitely are, as with addicts, two camps, the person who just won’t kill themselves under any circumstances and those who will. We may never quite know why, there may be many factors that go into that, but the people who are ‘at risk’ versus those who are not, are often hard to distinguish because in many ways they may both exhibit the same symptoms.

Many times I hear people say that those who commit suicide are ‘weak’ and ‘selfish.’ I have never thought they were. I see no good coming from condemning someone who was sad enough to take their own life. If we do it to discourage others, well it’s not really working, and whilst I would never advocating encouraging anyone to commit suicide or over-justifying those who do, I see no good in criticizing them after the fact. They made a decision, they chose to do it, who are we to say they are weak?

At the same time, we all hope someone will find the ‘strength’ or conviction to keep living. Nobody really approves of suicide except in extreme cases such as euthanasia for those who are suffering and in agonizing pain. Even then, in America, this is a very divided subject with those against, believing no murder is justified including the taking of ones own life, whilst others, often those who have seen it personally, can attest, some terminally ill people have the right to end their suffering.

So if we look at suicide of ‘healthy’ individuals, where do we place the depressed and the mentally ill on that scale? In some Scandinavian countries there have been people who have petitioned the Government to be euthanized based upon mental-illness. This has sparked outrage among those who believe this is tantamount to murder, and in no way qualifies as a terminal illness. Technically mental illness is rarely terminal although many ways, mental illness accompanies terminal diseases and exacerbates their symptomatology.

But even without being terminal, can mental illness ever be ‘bad’ enough to warrant or justify the taking of ones own life? And if we open that flood gate, how do we close it again?

I don’t claim to know the answer, I’m not sure anyone knows the answer yet but the side of suicide we don’t consider as often, isn’t just prevention or reason(s) behind suicide, but the aftermath.

Another friend of mine lost her mother to suicide. If I had to say, without hesitation I would say she became a more responsible, compassionate person as a result. But that doesn’t negate the extreme pain she still feels with the loss of her mom. Given a choice, every day she would wish for her mom’s return over any compassion she may have. The positives cannot outweigh the negative reality of losing someone you love.

If her mom had been deathly ill maybe she would have held a different view, I have never asked her, but either way, it is hard to imagine being ‘okay’ with someone’s suicide. That said, when Brittany Maynard committed suicide (euthanasia) in Oregon a while back I was profoundly moved by her videos and writing on the subject prior to her choice to end her life. Still very young and with a beautiful family, Brittany was terminally ill and knew in a matter of months she would be in excruciating pain and there was no cure and only awful suffering.

Many people condemned her for ‘taking the easy way out’ or ‘going against the will of God’ but I recall admiring her so much for her resolve and strength. I simply could not imagine making that choice, let alone going through with it. Her family moved to another State where Euthanasia is legal in order to be eligible and she made her plight and story public in an effort to educate people on the right to die. I believe in the right to die in part because of her efforts to show it is not the same as suicide.

With depression and other mental illnesses that are not responsive to treatment, it is not hard to imagine why people can be pushed to the brink and wish to end their lives. Should we consider euthanasia for severe cases of mental illness? Currently I don’t think we should but I recognize I may change my mind as more information becomes available. When I stop and think about living with say, Schizophrenia and other illnesses your entire life, in misery, without respite, and medications not working, I can definitely see why someone may wish to end their life. So why do I hesitate in condoning suicide or euthanasia in those cases?

Maybe because whilst we see mental illness as a disease, it’s not terminal and until something is actually ‘definitely’ going to take your life, we have this belief that there is hope, and we should not end our life based on feeling badly. Is this dismissive? I would say in some instances, yes, because there are chronic pain conditions that may include mental disease, that it could be argued, are as devastating to someone as a terminal illness. Perhaps we should give everyone the ‘right’ to choose if they live or die, and I would agree with this except for a worry that sometimes in certain mind-sets we don’t have the right objectivity to ‘choose’ without bias.

Mental illness is one of those biases. When you are mentally ill you can really see the world through a different lens. If you have not ever experienced that, believe me when I say, one day you can feel hopeful, the next it’s like the color was sucked out of the world and the pain you feel inside is unbearable and often without any cause. When that goes on for a prolonged period of time each day can be agonizing. It is definitely understandable that when people feel this way they may contemplate suicide.

The argument against this is – people typically commit suicide or attempt suicide when they are panicking or have calmly given up (the two extremes) they either panic that they will never feel differently and ‘stop the pain! stop it now! stop it any way you can!’ or they feel reconciled to their fate, they do not believe it will ever change, and so they give themselves permission to let go.

Perhaps that is why the very young and the very old are the two groups most likely to take their own lives.

As mentioned earlier, there are many who no matter how bad it got, would never commit suicide. That isn’t necessarily anything to do with personal fortitude or strength, it may be a genetic proclivity, or several factors, but they often perceive those who take their lives as inexplicable. They cannot and will not understand, and they feel understanding is condoning. I would argue, understanding is NOT condoning it’s understanding. We need more understanding.

Mental illness is not always visible, so we often do not know someone is suffering from it until it’s too late. Signs to look for include giving away what we own, a sudden sense of peace and feeling good, high anxiety and stress and the bequeathing of things previously withheld. Of course that’s not going to ensure you accurately predict whom among us is at risk, because just like in the film 13 Reasons, so many people exhibit signs and so many do not, and that’s no guarantee of anything. Additionally suicide can be a sudden choice, you literally realize in a moment and bam, it’s too late.

One population aside teenagers that I believe will increasingly be at risk for suicide is the elderly. More so because our grandparents social security and pensions were more robust than ours will be with some exceptions. It is simply more expensive to live nowadays and the money we will need to live even relatively well in old age, is often more than we can save and invest. Poverty and loneliness are two of the main reasons the elderly choose to take their lives. The third is illness. This can include mental illness. We sometimes believe the value of a person’s life diminishes with increasing age, but every life should have the same value.

The elderly have less resources than teens and in a way, less hope, because they are ageing toward death, whereas a teen has their entire life ahead of them. Sometimes hastening ones death can seem a good choice, to end suffering, loneliness, worry, financial concerns. The elderly can feel they are a burden, they can feel they are not wanted in our ever busy society that highlights youth. Additionally, are we ready as a society to take care of the many who will devleop dementia, which often carries alongside it, chronic depression? Is loading an eighty year old with heavy duty medications and antidepressants all we can to do help them?

Caregivers of the elderly will also experience mental health issues as a result of the hard work they do. Presently elderly patients are over medicated and have less resources for talk-therapy or other treatments. It is deemed simply easier to stick them on a lot of medications and hope they’ll die than treat their suffering compassionately and with an understanding their lives, however long, still hold value. Is it any wonder then that so many elderly are at risk of suicide and premature death? As long as we judge people based on their economic ‘worth’ and believe the elderly ‘had their time’ we will never improve this and rates of elder-abuse will grow.

So whilst we can do more to look out for people, we will never prevent someone from committing suicide if they are absolutely set on doing so. What we can do is save the ones who do not wish to and need a reason not to. It may seem absurd that anyone should really want to die, but there will always be people who do, they find different ways, they take risks, they drive their cars too fast, they may join a terrorist group. Often very unhappy people choose suicide by proxy, by putting themselves in danger and waiting to see if it will take them.

Suicide and mental health are always going to be interrelated and there is a lot the people around those people can do to prevent a successful suicide, but ultimately the best we can do is not judge those who die, for what possible good comes from that? Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to try to understand why someone did what they did. Sometimes there is nothing to understand. But with understanding we can learn, whereas if we simply condemn, we learn absolutely nothing.

Mental Health Month #Day 7 “Rape”

I dedicate this to my friend Merril Smith, for her uncompromising and courageous effort in her book The Encyclopedia of Rape, which I am currently reading. If any of you teach Gender studies or social issues, this is a book worth using.

Rape isn’t a subject people talk about very often. Sadly it’s a subject people joke about quite a bit.

The first time I heard a rape-joke I didn’t get it. It was too disgusting to ‘get’ and I am glad I didn’t. Everyone else did though and they all laughed. At the time I didn’t think how someone sitting there who had been raped would feel, but statistics tell us, that likelihood is quite high considering that 80 percent of rape goes unreported and even the reported numbers are staggering.

How a rape joke could hope to be funny, baffles me, but it maybe is more telling of our society as a whole, that we can laugh at true misfortune and tragedy. That’s not gallows humor, that’s just sick.

Rape is never funny. Rape is never something that doesn’t matter. Perhaps if we acted like it mattered more, those who were rape survivors would not be more subject to a plethora of mental illness.

That’s why rape is a subject this Mental Health Month. Because the link between rape and mental illness exists. Rape can among other things, be a cause or contributing cause or exacerbation of; PTSD, Anxiety, Eating Disorders, Depression, Phobias, Suicidality and Suicide, Cutting/Self-Harm and many other conditions.

We’ve talked in earlier posts about how that doesn’t diminish the very real and medical ‘illness’ of mental disorders, and just because an act pushes someone toward feeling a certain way, does not decrease the legitimacy of the illness part of any mental disease. Illness can and is caused by trauma, and there are few things more traumatic to a girl or woman (or boy or man) than rape.

Perhaps though there is one thing worse and that is not being believed, or the act of rape being diminished or ignored.

I hope most of you have watched The Hunting Ground, a documentary on Campus rapes here in America, but if you have not yet, and you have children, know college age kids, or people who work on campuses, it is compulsory viewing not to be missed.

Ultimately the numbers of rapes committed in any situation are underreported, under prosecuted, and not punished. Some judges do not believe a rapist should go to jail. It is often said ‘but he’s such a good boy and he has his entire life ahead of him’ and this stands as a perfectly reasonable explanation for not giving a rapist a harsher sentence.

The other big let-down as far as rape in the legal system goes, is that rape has a statute of limitations and thus, if five years pass and you do not report your rape you are not protected under the law anymore and cannot prosecute your rapist. This is not true for many other crimes including murder, and financial embezzlement. In other words, you can prosecute someone for stealing from you years later, but you cannot prosecute someone for raping you after a certain time period. Great message you’re giving the survivor!

In the interest of fairness, it should be pointed out this exists because the likelihood of having proof after five years is diminished and it is to protect those falsely accused many years later. But that relies upon a significant swath of false accusations and assumes that proof must exist to punish a rape rather than taking the word of the survivor. Therein lies the rub. It is a difficult subject to prosecute when it’s one person’s word against another and historically women have not been believed over men who were upstanding and respected in the community. So if you’re a prostitute and you are raped by a politician, don’t expect anyone to believe you.

Maybe we cannot do enough about this to change it entirely, but speeding up the rate of prosecution cases, ensuring all rape kits are tested (when so many lie untested due to lack of funding) ensuring the survivors are not ‘blamed’ during their legal ordeal, and educating everyone about the low figures of false reporting, may make some difference.

As with anything we can find examples of those who cried wolf, but that is literally true of anything human. It is singular to rape survivors that they are accused of ‘making it up’ as if everyone involved knows of 1000 x cases of liars who pretended they were raped for whatever gain. We should as we do with ‘innocent until proven guilty’ assume someone is likely to be telling the truth when they pluck up the courage and report being raped. If nothing else, something is wrong.

No more so than on campuses across America today, where so many young people are raped and do not report it knowing it will not go anywhere, or do report it and find those who raped them are not penalized sufficiently because they are a star football player. This inequality of punishment needs to be eliminated because what you are effectively saying is, you are not worth as much as the rapist or we do not believe your rape mattered enough to punish this person.

Sometimes I have heard people say ‘she’s too ugly to be raped she must be lying’ and awful things like that. I had one person told by a police officer that because she admitted she was gay, she had obviously chosen to ‘try the other side’ for the night when she was dragged along the street at night and raped by a stranger in an abandoned warehouse. Sure. She wanted it.

Seeing why people who survive rape, are at high risk for some kind of short-term mental illness or at high risk for exacerbating a pre-existing one, is obvious when you look at the details of what someone really goes through. The aftermath of rape is nearly always the worst part. We need to bring our ability to empathize and our compassion to the table and treat all rape cries seriously.

I have worked in two Rape Crisis Centers and the second one I worked in, only prosecuted a handful of cases via the authorities, due to the enormous back-log of DNA testing (rape kits) and the desire of the authorities to plea deal rather than prosecute. Let us not forget a plea deal is often a free pass for a rapist and his offense is often knocked down to a smaller crime that will not indicate to someone looking at his record, that he is a serial rapist. Typically those who rape do so again and again, so if we do not incarcerate them, reeducate them and rehabilitate them if possible they will go out and do it again.

Likewise those who are beyond our help are still let out onto the streets along with paedophiles whom they know will re-offend it’s just a matter of time. How does this happen? How can we justify this?

For those survivors who tell others that they were raped, it is on our shoulders to be as supportive and gentle as possible with someone who confides in us. So often rape is a subject of humor and fun making and there is literally, nothing funny about rape.

https://merrildsmith.wordpress.com/

https://www.rainn.org/

National Sexual Abuse Hotline: 800-656-HOPE

How to respond to a survivor: https://www.rainn.org/articles/how-respond-survivor

 

https://mirrorwithoutglass.wordpress.com/2017/05/07/mental-health-month-day-7-rape/

Mental Health Month Day Five

With the gravity of Mental Illness in all human societies across the world, I’m devoting a lot of social media presence to garnering awareness of this often lethal disease. Please support this, forward any information you find useful and educate others by reading and sharing our posts to all those who remain ignorant of this awful disease in a community effort to end the stigma and shame.

https://mirrorwithoutglass.wordpress.com/

https://www.facebook.com/candicedaquinauthor/

Happy Cinco de mayo !