Mental Health Problems - the Diagnostic Formula

Mental health is the ability to

Love 

Work

Play

What is wrong with the patients Love Life?

Love life refers to significant other, children, parents, friends, acquaintenances, pets.

Mostly in my experience people have had a deficit in relationships, specifically low in quantity and quality.

But they resist change.  

The workplace was once a way of making friends as was the neighbourhood but increasingly these are sterilized by politically correct legislation reminiscent of ‘class’ distinction of a bygone era.  

The apartment has become a home entertainment place where people isolate and addictions grow.  

Clubs, churches, synagogues, temples, 12 step programs, service groups, volunteer organizations are all places where people can meet and make new friends and make new love but this requires effort.  So the obese person shows up at the doctor seeking a pill to cure their gluttony and sloth. The depressed person seeks a pill to make them attractive and cause them to have a ‘life’.  Yet it’s nearly impossible for a person ‘stuck’ to progress. There needs to be a stimulus.  Most go to work to pay the rent but beyond that cling to bare existence hoping that change will not be necessary.

What is wrong with the work life?

Work is not just a place to make the money to pay the rent and food. It can be much more. Having work is central to positive self esteem and a sense of fulfillment.  People actually want to ‘feel good like their neighbour’ but not ‘work like their neighbour’.  Erick Erickson describe and ‘industry’ phase of childhood, preadolescnece, a time when children naturally tried and enjoyed a variety of activities. Wondering what one might do, one can merely ask what did one like to do 6-12 years old .  What were the interests then? What was the spark?  Having a job, any job, is better than no job is a better attitude than waiting for the perfect job.  Out of work one is ‘stuck’.  Working, one is able to be mobilized to seek better work.  Working doesn’t mean you can’t apply for better work. The potential new employer is simply informed that you have a job and are looking for better so that interviews and such can’t interfere with your existing employment.  Your present job doesn’t need to know you’re looking for a better job until the new job is in the hand.  Firm offers.  

What amazes me is that so many of those who aren’t complainers are found doing ‘adult education’.  It’s one thing to be in a job one doesn’t like it’s another to be taking positive steps to be upwardly mobile out of that job with further education.  If there’s a light at the end of the tunnel its easier to carry on than not.

What does one like about the present job. What doesn’t one like.  Many a time a change in manager has changed the job. Many a time a change in company despite doing the same task makes all the difference.  

What is wrong with the play life?

Many a person expects to be happy with out work or love?  They really do.  Addiction medicine is full of people who want a ‘free lunch’.  I’m never sure if this was a precursor of the development of addiction, the search for instant happiness, or followed the false sense of ‘instant gratification.’  Others put inordinate demands on their loved ones or their work life when a few games of golf, tennis, weekly swimming or running, or daily walks or membership in a soft ball team would round up an otherwise unhappy life.