This week we read the lovely "The Yellow Wallpaper" which provides a fascinating insight into mental illness and its pre-modern treatment.

Until the civil war, doctors believed that sickness, disease, infection, was all caused by a imbalance of four fluids within the human body, and that balance could be reattained by purging the patient, often removing huge quantities of blood that would kill the patient. This "treatment" had been standard since the second century Anno Domini. With this in mind, it's not hard to understand that doctors, even today, have a weak understanding of mental illness and its proper treatment. Mental illness remains difficult for the patient to cope with and for the doctors to treat for various reasons.

Firstly, mental illness is not something you can see.
As humans, we prefer to deal with concrete, visible problems that we can simply evaluate, and treat accordingly with conventional medications, drugs, rehabilitation, etc. However, mental illness is the antithesis of a simple injury easily righted. Walking down the street, it's usually impossible to tell from a glance if someone is suffering, unless you see a cast, bandages, some overt physical marker that tells the world they're hurt. But mental illness, although not nearly as overt, can be just as debilitating if not more than a broken leg or concussion, as mental illness festers, multiplies in intensity. Once someone succumbs to mental illness, it's painful to pull oneself out of. It's not like one can wrap their skull in bandages and take some drug and everything is fine and dandy. It's rather the opposite.

Mental illness is a chronic condition that no doctor can "fix". The only cure from mental illness comes from within, from a mental shift. Albeit, drugs may aid some people (while causing viscous side effects, often worse than the original condition) to get over their humps, but mental illness is never really "cured". One might feel better mentally, or learn to cope with their conditions better, but the shell, the husk of the mental battle is always in the back of one's head, waiting to be indulged once again. The battle against mental illness is never over; it's a journey, to drag heavy, torn, demented feet through mud and sand, with nothing more than the hope for improvement, content. Not all make the journey. Some lay dead by their hand, the pain too severe to tolerate any longer. And some, some never start the journey. They permit the illness to fester, to grip every cell in their minds. And they die as they lived.