I just realized that I overlooked this article of yours! What a pity, because I find that you consider very important things. In particular, I also find your bold text to highlight.
Aaron Beck’s reflection ...
For me it is as clear as day that people don't get sick as individuals alone, but within a system. Why is it so obvious that in children psychological disorders are so easily understood as an expression of a dissonance in the family system, but in adults this is apparently less so?
Of course, the family systems are to be mentioned first in children, because they are still shaped most by them, but the older we get, the more systems are added and what we experience and feel is always also an expression of what a community/society/nation/world experiences and feels. For me, depressive or other psychological problems are indeed the measure of a society, they express what others oppress or ignore.
I mean, you really don't have to be a psychologist to see, for example, that a wife gets sad and depressed when her husband buries his own grief with work and distraction after the death of a child. The more he denies it, the more she will carry it out into the world in the form of sadness (or anger, or both). Both of them affect the systems around them (social and other systems).
The psychology of man is like a signal flag, like a fire that wants to be seen and thematized. If a person has the impression that nobody around him is interested in his grief or insecurity with regard to his life planning and development, he uses other means (e. g. addictions) or becomes "mentally ill" in some alternative way (I agree with you and find the term distasteful, too).
How can one doubt this and say: My husband, my girlfriend, my son, my colleague at work is ill because his brain doesn't work properly, because his hormones are playing badly with him, because he has a physiological defect. Which is not entirely wrong, but also not entirely right.
I emphasize this because it is easy, for example, to explain a depression on this basis. But it is much more difficult to include the systemic aspects and find an explanation. Anyone who - as a relative, spouse, sister, father, colleague, boss, team participant - wants nothing to do with the illness of the person affected and believes that the person is somehow depressed regardless of the social environment and the conditions, may be afraid to see such things and reflect on them themselves.
I find this contribution of yours very much to the point and would like to say that this is how I see it in general, too.
This is a wonderful comment Erika. I am grateful that you were able to take time and add such invaluable insight to this discussion. The observation you made about the isolation of adult individuals (and not of children) when it comes to psychological distress is both valid and important. No one wants to acknowledge there is a possibility they are also a contributing part of the issue.
It does break my heart when I see the emphasis the diagnostic system puts of the biomedical model: "Here, go home and make sure you take your medication." Alas!
Thank you once again for gifting us with your infomed, intelligent rationale Erika!
Much love to you always :*
Yup. Sadly, people like to put it all on the single person but exclude themselves out of the equation. But we are here to tell otherwise, aren't we? LOL!! I think we will succeed in the long run and one day it will be common knowledge. Maybe not in our life time, though.
Have a good day, dear Abi.
Smack!
Erika