Psychologists Debunk 25 Mental-Health Myths

Laura Goorin: So the myth that all neat freaks have OCD is common. Most people who are clean just care about being clean, and that's totally different than having OCD. Furthermore, there are not five stages of loss. It's just a myth. Narrator: That's Laura Goorin, one of three

psychologists

we brought into our studios to

debunk

some of the most common

myths

about

mental

health

. Goorin: So the myth that most people with schizophrenia have multiple personalities was a very old way of understanding it and has been proven not to be true. So with schizophrenia, it's not about another personality.

What it is, however, is a break with reality and with a part of ourselves, perhaps, for example, that believes someone is out to get them. Well, that's a very common problem in schizophrenia. So the myth that all "neat freaks" have OCD is common. It seems like it's almost a popular cultural thing for people to say to each other, "You have OCD," when someone is organizing their bag. And actually, OCD itself, the disease has different components. And one of the subsets is keeping things organized and clean. But it has to be at an obsessive level, where people are thinking about it all the time.

And that in itself is really uncommon. Most people who are clean simply care about being clean. And that's totally different than having OCD. Jillian Stile: Bipolar disorder is not just mood swings. It's a very high elevation of a maybe positive mood and a very low, negative mood. Everyone has mood swings. But with bipolar disorder, it's not just about that. They are severe forms of elevated mood or depressed mood, and they go through that. And so sometimes it could show up as symptoms of a manic episode, it could be someone, like hypersexuality or not sleeping at all and things like that.

It's not just about feeling good. Goorin: This is a common myth and I hear people mention it a lot too. Anxiety itself is thinking, thinking, thinking. And imagine yourself sinking into worrying thoughts of “what if?” What if, what if this happens, what if that happens? And it's relentless and lasts for hours for some people. Sometimes it is more temporary for others. But being stressed about something, as humans, we are programmed to handle stressors, and we have been dealing with an onslaught of stressors since the beginning of time. You know, going to work, taking the subway, coming into contact with other people.

You know, that can be stressful. That can cause stress. Unless you have an actual panic attack while taking the subway, that would be more of an anxiety reaction, whereas the stress of taking the subway is more stress-based. Stile: You know, everyone feels anxious, say, before a presentation or before an exam. But an anxiety disorder is the extreme form of that, where it interferes with a person's daily functioning. Goorin: This is actually a very important myth. Sadness is an ephemeral reaction to something. It is an emotion and, by definition, it lasts a few seconds. It can last like 10 minutes, but on average we have one emotion, it passes and then we have another emotion.

What tends to take us from sadness to depression is rumination, which means thinking and thinking and thinking about something over and over and over again. And this is how we go from sadness to depression, but it is not something immediate. We all have moments of sadness and we simply allow them and let them pass. We tend to be fine. But if we get caught up in ruminating and thinking about all the reasons why we're sad, that's when we tend to fall into depression. So to the myth that depression is not a real illness, it is a real illness and in fact, it can be incredibly debilitating.

To classify as depression, we have to have some type of lethargic behavior where we have trouble getting out of bed. I mean, there are different forms of depression, but one of the main ones has what are called neurovegetative symptoms, like we can't sleep, we can't eat. There is also a type of depression which is dysthymia, which has a component of anhedonia, which means less pleasure in the things we used to enjoy, which is another type of depression. And a lot of people will describe it as, "Oh, I loved pottery and now I can't even look at pots." Know?

Something totally changes for them when they are deep in this state of depression. Neil Altman: Talking about painful things that you have learned to cover up may be initially more painful, but in order to resolve things that, if not addressed directly, will come back to bother you. I'll say another thing about this: sometimes patients wonder, "What will the therapist feel if I say this and that?" For example, "Can the therapist handle the level of despair that he sometimes feel?" And on those occasions, when the patient has the strength to express it and see how the therapist responds, the fact that the therapist can handle it is a big step towards the patient being able to handle it.

There are reasons and they can change over time. But I think what I would like to

debunk

in that regard is the idea that there is only one reason. So if you handle that, you will be freed from that. And there isn't. In most cases, there isn't. You have to discover the reasons, plural, why you are depressed and what you can do about it. And what you can't. Stile: The myth that only women get depressed couldn't be further from the truth. However, women are twice as likely to suffer from depression. So the reason people often think that women have a higher rate of depression than men is perhaps due to hormonal changes, life circumstances, and stress.

The other thing I like to think about is that women might express their feelings in a different way than men. So sometimes men can act out, while women can focus on their inner experience. Therefore, they are more likely to see a therapist if that is the case. Goorin: When people have taken the path of eventually deciding to take antidepressant medication, it doesn't change their personality; The symptoms of depression change. They can also work for anxiety. So usually, if you just have typical symptoms of depression and anxiety, you'll be given an antidepressant, it's what it's called, an SSRI.

And that will help us regulate the symptoms of our, just, mood ups and downs. And the way I describe it to people is like getting back to square one when it comes to the right medication. But that doesn't change your personality. Your personality is you. So in terms of the myth that antidepressants will always cure us of depression, research shows that the most effective thing right now for depression is actually therapy. And then for people who need antidepressants, therapy and antidepressants together is another effective way. And not everyone has to accept it. Therefore, even in the case of people taking antidepressants, it is important to continue therapy.

Altman: I think the myth that bad parenting causes

mental

illness is a trap. Because parents are too willing to take responsibility and feel guilty for all kinds of problems their children have. So there is no point in reinforcing that and harming and harming the parents' mental

health

. If you believe that your parents caused your mental illness, you will end up complaining endlessly about your parents. What can you do about the way you were raised? You can do something with what you have left in the present. Goorin: Around LGBT adults and youth, there are many

myths

associated with mental health.

And I think a lot of this is, unfortunately, because the profession that I work in had a very dirty history in this regard: in the DSM, which is our Diagnostic Statistical Manual, until 1973, homosexuality was actually listed like a disorder. And after a lot of backlash and studying and integrating LGBTQ rights into theory, we realized that that was really outdated. And since then, in the DSM-3, it stopped being that, unless someone has specific anxiety related to being gay, then they are never diagnosed with a mental health disorder associated with that. In fact, the same goes for being trans.

That only if someone has what is called dysphoria, where he doesn't like his body, then he has a diagnosis. But being trans in itself is no longer a disorder. You know, to the question about what role mental health plays in gun violence attacks, unfortunately, people who have serious mental illnesses have been mischaracterized as being more likely to commit crimes and with firearms. It's not that people with mental illness are more likely to be aggressive. It is the people who commit these crimes who have access to guns and tend to hate themselves. That's the main thing that makes people lack empathy.

Those seem to be the things that make them more violent and aggressive. Those are better predictors than any type of mental health disorder. People talk about an entire city, like on the news: "An entire city was traumatized by the shooting," for example. Good? And it doesn't work that way, and that is, in fact, one of the most common mental health disorders that I've seen mischaracterized in that particular way: PTSD. People seem to think that by virtue of having the experience of a potentially traumatic event, you're going to have this particular realm of symptoms that include hypervigilance, there's impulsivity.

There are many different realms of what happens to people after trauma, and I've heard people say, you know, "Because I was traumatized, because I was there on 9/11," for example. Well, there was a whole city there and we have very good numbers on the number of people who ended up having PTSD, and they're actually very small. When something like this happens, a major tragedy like a shooting or 9/11 or any other type of tragedy like that, people tend to be resilient. In fact, there is a big myth, even within the mental health field, that there are prototypical ways of responding to grief and loss.

And that also happens in pop culture, where people have this idea that there's a way to grieve, and if we're not devastated and deeply traumatized, we're somehow in denial or callous. And that is not true. In fact, since the beginning of time we have been dealing with death. We have different ways of dealing with it. And sometimes we feel relieved that the person dies because we didn't have a very good relationship with them. Or even if the person, if we love them and feel really connected to them but they were sick, we feel relieved that they are dead because we don't want them to suffer anymore.

People tend to feel really guilty about feeling relieved after a death, which is a very common reaction to death. There are not five stages of loss; It's just a myth. And it is one of the most popular myths that exist. And it's one of those things where people who aren't very psychologically minded come and say, "Oh my God, I must be in the loss denial phase," or "I must be in this phase because I'm not dealing with it." that still." Actually, I think it's one of those things that makes us feel safe. If we can imagine that these stages are ahead, then we can feel better about where we are, and I think that's why it's so popular.

However, I've seen the flip side, so it can be damaging, when people have losses and they judge themselves for not having this prototypical series of stages, and it's not based on reality or evidence or anything like that. the style. Okay, so people are going to hate me for saying this, but this is very common in the dating world. For example, if you ever look at people's profiles on dating profiles, they always say, "I'm a NYFB" or I don't even know what they say. But it's always about how sure they are, you know, about the Myers-Briggs score.

And it's very popular today, Myers-Briggs. And in fact, many organizations use it and actually base a lot of their testing on it. Again, there is no validation around any of these studies. And while it may resonate for people, and that's something that, you know, like when we talk about, you know, "I'm a Gemini because I do this," you know, it resonates for you, the idea of ​​being a Gemini, and you can act in ways that remind you of this description of what it is to be a Gemini, but there is no empirical evidence to say that you are such a thing.

There are personality tests, but Myers-Briggs is not one of them. Altman: The myth that therapy will focus exclusively on the past or predominantly on the past and won't help you in your current life or won't give you a way to talk about what's happening today and yesterday, there's a reason why. people cling to that. myth. And the reason is that there was an early version of psychoanalysis that supported the idea that people's personalities were formed in their first five years and that the past was strongly formative of the present. Sometimes it can be helpful to say that there was a pattern that was established in relation to people in the past.

And that can give you perspective on what's happening in the present. So, referring to the past is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is neverit should be because this happened and therefore you are having this problem now. It's not an explanation. It's just a way to gain perspective on the present. Stile: I think a lot of times people might say, "Oh, why not talk to a friend who's a good friend and can keep things confidential?" But therapists are trained to work in a particular way to help people deal with the specific problems they face. Therapists are different from friends because, even if your friends are willing, for example, to keep a secret, therapists actually treat things in a very confidential way.

And they're willing to explore things that maybe a friend would be uncomfortable exploring. Altman: Actually, the fact is that most people who come to therapy are among the strongest people. And the reason is that they have the courage and strength to look at themselves, which is not easy to do in several ways. I think it's because the people who come to me are people who have already decided to work on themselves. Good therapists don't force their patients to talk about something they don't want to talk about. On the contrary, I think that even encouraging a person to talk about something they are not ready to talk about is counterproductive.

The problem with touching weak spots directly on the head is privacy, for one. People have the right to their privacy. Therapy is not just an opportunity to talk. So I think having people's privacy, when their privacy is respected, gives them more confidence to open up. But the other problem is that the therapist must think that there is a limit to everyone's tolerance, including the therapist, in how much pain they can tolerate at any given time. So respecting people's anxiety about being involved in some of the most difficult things in their lives is also part of the process.

Goorin: Psychiatrists are the only ones who can prescribe medications in this country. They do what is called a psychopharmacological consultation, where they will review your entire history. And that's something they do if you want them to. And I say if you want that because it's really important. As a psychologist, for example, we always try therapy first. It is the preferred treatment of all doctors. In fact, they've done all these studies that have shown that therapy first for several months before even thinking about a medication is the best treatment for people. Because that way you can really see what's what.

And if you still want to take medication afterwards, that's certainly something you can talk about. But it is not necessary to take medications. It's up to you and your therapist if you think that would be beneficial for you. Altman: I wouldn't say that most therapists believe that therapy should last forever. But I think when you interview someone and consider them your therapist, that's something you should ask. How do you think about how long this should last and when do you start to think that maybe it's time to end it? How do you break up with your therapist?

Don't break up with your therapist over email, text, or phone message. You have to be direct. You have to say, "I've been thinking that maybe it's time for us to stop." But that can't be the end. If you haven't said it yet, hopefully you've already said it in one way or another in previous sessions. "What I've been looking for is this and I see how it's been happening in my life." And maybe give one or two examples. But it's not that you feel like you have to convince the therapist. I want to make sure people know that there are many ways to get good psychotherapy at a low price.

Therefore, there are institutes where people obtain advanced training beyond the doctorate. And all these institutes have training clinics where people receive treatment at low prices. And some people might think that the higher the fee, the more skilled the practitioner, which is not necessarily the case. But certainly in that case it is not true.