It’s time to relabel ‘mental health disabilities’ as ‘mental health patterns’
‘Therapy is for the crazy people!’. Mental health problems and their solutions are widely disregarded, simply because they don’t fall into the realm of physical health problems and are assumed to be in one’s control. But that is the biggest misunderstanding of it all — ‘We don’t actually have full control of our thought patterns.’ Unlike what some motivational speakers on TikTok might have you believe, thought patterns are much more complicated and are informed by everything from childhood experiences, past trauma, and the present environment. In more recent research, it has been proven that one’s mental health is also affected by intergenerational trauma and stereotypes that exist in communities. Everyone has a different kind of thought pattern. It’s not a choice you make to go through difficult circumstances as a child or not have the opportunity to feel the world around you. (Listen to ‘Easy on me’ by Adele)
While the neuroscience of the link between the structure of the brain and the thought patterns is still developing, we know enough to make the statement that a lot of mental health problems arise from the structure and function of the brain. This is further complicated by hormones and the variation of their levels in different humans. Some humans have more of certain hormones while some have less. Add that to the presence of receptors (that bind to the hormones) and their behavior under different environmental pressure, we have a complex system that works in different ways for different people and can produce entirely different results for the same set of inputs. Don’t believe me? Refer to the brain scans of different kinds of ADHD / ADD brains above.
Let’s take an example — We take two kids (one with ADHD and one without) and ask them to solve a math problem. Most kids with ADHD have math anxiety and will have trouble solving the problem. Let’s be clear — It’s not about the kid’s capability to do the math, it’s about their ability to not be overwhelmed by a task. Most students with ADHD need more structure, guidance, and counseling to make sure that they learn to overcome their fears. This is because the pattern of focus for kids with ADHD is highly variable and can rise/fall very quickly unlike other kids.
In a traditional education system, the kid with ADHD will simply be labeled ‘lazy’ or ‘not focussed’. But the kid isn’t lazy, they simply need more space to figure out ways to solve problems. More importantly, the space they need isn’t a choice, it’s a right. One deserves the right to accommodations when they have mental health difficulties. But this is where we leave out a lot of people that still deserve the space and the counseling but never really realize it, or even think that they need it.
It’s not a disability, it’s a pattern of the brain that you don’t control (but you can manage)
Let’s be clear about this — thought patterns aren’t a choice. One doesn’t choose to be negative or positive. ‘Why can’t you just be more positive?’ — if only it were that easy to switch a button and become positive. The nervous system works together to produce complex behaviors in humans. As we all know, they range from the worst outcomes to the best outcomes.
A simple utilitarian argument against this perspective is that one can measure the outcome of their actions, and then make a decision. But there’s a problem with this argument, we always assume that people can see the bigger picture. It’s not a choice but rather a pattern that leads to the mistakes that humans commit. Let’s take an example-
A hungry homeless man decided to steal the wallet from a good-looking gentleman. The traditional law would label the homeless man as a criminal and the gentleman as a victim for getting hurt by the other’s actions. Let’s flip the perspective of the homeless man — He steals because he thinks that stealing a little bit would not hurt the gentleman as much but it’d save the homeless person’s life (gentleman losing money vs. saving a life). You can read more about utilitarianism if you’d like. Am I trying to justify a crime? No, I’m not. I’m trying to justify why people behave the way they behave, and why we need to look at crime from a mental health perspective.
Mental health isn’t a dichotomy, it’s a spectrum
In reality, there is no such thing as ‘kids with ADHD’ and then ‘kids with no ADHD’. Biology always works in a spectrum. There are kids out there with some symptoms of ADHD that are probably labeled as their weaknesses. Some classic examples:
- ‘They’re just a messy person.’
- ‘They’re never on time. They’re always running late.’
- ‘I can never fall asleep early. It’s just a thing with me.’
The brain scans above are evidence of the fact that different parts of the brain can be partially or fully affected by ADD. Surprisingly, all of the three above are symptoms of ADHD. While they’re also symptoms of other mental health patterns (note, not disabilities), they do need a certain level of management (a.k.a therapy) for these people to become aware of their thought patterns and then manage them.
Have you ever thought that there’s an aspect of your life that you just can’t solve? Maybe you can’t get yourself to read a book, commit to a relationship, or exercise. More importantly, have you consistently blamed yourself for it? That’s the problem right there. We need to start thinking of these problems as phenomena/outcomes of our thought patterns. Once you start observing your thought patterns, you can identify the instances when you feel that way and then take steps to counteract those outcomes. Our social constructs blame us for the problems that we didn’t make. ‘You should be able to do this’. I respond — ‘How do you know? Are you in my brain?’. Nobody else is in your brain, You’re in your brain. To understand ourselves and our unconscious tendencies, we need Therapy — a lot of it.
