There are a lot of misconceptions about people with mental health disorders. Many of these are fueled by a lack of understanding about the conditions, media portrayals that are inaccurate, or outdated information that continues to be considered common knowledge. At Highland Hospital Behavioral Health in Charleston, West Virginia, we think it’s important for our patients, their families, and the world around them to recognize that these myths do not define people with behavioral health disorders.
Lie #1 – People with Mental Health Conditions are “Lazy”.
Behavioral health disorders can be debilitating in ways that are often misunderstood and stigmatized as laziness:
- ADHD can impair focus and make it difficult for students to succeed in academic settings. People with this disorder may struggle to get started on tasks and often find it difficult to stay organized.
- Depression can cause fatigue that limits a person’s ability to complete tasks like cooking, cleaning, and hygiene. It can drain them of hope to the point that they no longer see the purpose in trying.
- There are mental health medications that can make people more sensitive to heat and prone to overheating, limiting what physical activities they can do outdoors and causing them to need breaks when completing tasks other people take for granted.
- The severity of a person’s mental health symptoms may also cause them to lose jobs and need to stop working, either temporarily or permanently.
- Some mental health conditions can increase the likelihood that a person will develop medical disorders. While the mental health diagnosis may not impact their productivity, the medical condition might.
- There are also people who experience heightened awareness of physical pain as a result of their behavioral health conditions, and this results in less productivity, due to fear of movement and the intense pain it brings.
- Unhoused people are often labeled lazy because it is thought that they don’t want to work. Around a quarter to a third of people who are homeless have serious mental health concerns that have contributed to their situation, such as depression, schizophrenia, suicidal thoughts, trauma histories, or substance use disorders
None of these is are examples of laziness. These are all examples of mental illness making life harder. Rather than focusing on these concerns as moral failings or lack of effort, it is far more helpful to proceed with compassion, consider these to be symptoms, and focus on treating the underlying condition.
Lie #2 – People with Mental Health Conditions are “Dangerous”.
Think about the messages that most people get about mental illness:
- Whenever there is media coverage of horrific violence, the perpetrator may automatically be labeled as mentally ill, often despite having no psychiatric diagnosis and evidence to indicate that the real issue fueling the violence isn’t mental illness, as much as a history of childhood abuse, unemployment, living in a high-crime neighborhood, or substance misuse
- Movies and television shows often portray mental health disorders inaccurately or focus on extreme examples that don’t reflect how most people with that condition experience it. Mental illness is used as shorthand for instability, danger, and violence, fueling stigma and fear.
- People having psychotic episodes are often in the earliest stages of their condition. They may not know they even have a mental health condition, and they may become violent as a result of fear and confusion. Their behavior during psychosis may draw a lot of attention, but people aren’t frequently exposed to information about what happens after a person experiencing a psychotic episode gets an accurate diagnosis and professional support.
Lie #3 – People with Mental Health Conditions Just Need to Try Harder.
This is often linked to the laziness myth above. People with behavioral health disorders, from ADHD to addiction and depression to PTSD, are expected to use willpower to push through their symptoms and function like everyone else. This can lead people to internalize a lot of guilt and shame about their symptoms and reduce the likelihood that they will reach out for help.
There is also a tendency to assume that if people with psychiatric disorders aren’t taking medication, then they don’t really care to get better, but there are many reasons why people do not take behavioral health meds. Some of these include:
- Poor insight into their condition
- Not feeling that the medication is helping them
- Experiencing or fearing they will experience unpleasant side effects
- Not understanding how the medication works
- Inability to afford their meds
- Issues accessing a pharmacy
Lie #4 – Mental Health Conditions Are Caused by Bad Parenting.
Children with ADHD are sometimes viewed as naughty children who just need more discipline. On the other hand, adults with psychiatric disorders are often assumed to have been abused as kids. While abuse and neglect can absolutely have a lasting impact on a person’s mental health, there are many causes of mental illness, and many people who develop psychiatric disorders have been raised by loving, supportive parents who did not do anything to contribute to their mental illness.
At Highland Hospital Behavioral Health in Charleston, West Virginia, we treat each patient as a unique individual. We provide trauma-informed, evidence-based care that starts with compassion and respect.
