suicide solution?
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D_Gunther Snotpole
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I've thought about it, but never very seriously.
I can't imagine that anyone's mind wouldn't throw the idea up at least occasionally. Our minds go everywhere.
Big difference, though, between having the thought and having anything like an actual attention ... much less the motivation to get anywhere near an actual attempt.
I can't imagine that anyone's mind wouldn't throw the idea up at least occasionally. Our minds go everywhere.
Big difference, though, between having the thought and having anything like an actual attention ... much less the motivation to get anywhere near an actual attempt.
I'm have Bipolar Disorder. Suicidal thoughts are par for the course, especially with the specific type of mania and depression I have to deal with. I consider myself lucky that I have never been sufficiently ill to make an attempt. I don't see suicide as something that can be controlled with thinking and strength any more than mental illness can. I don't think people who commit suicide are selfish or wrong, I think they are gravely ill and I feel terrible for them and for their family. Thought patterns and processes while one is having a severe mood episode are so skewed, painful, and delusional from chemical bases that it seems like a viable option to the sufferer. I can't make value judgements based on that. I can only be thankful that I have been so lucky to not have been quite that sick and am therefore still here.
This kind of discrimination and derision against people with mental illness is why so many don't get treated, which adds to the needless and senseless deaths of suicide.
Also-- I agree with Rubi. I'm sure it's something most people have entertained and then rejected at various low points in their lives. I don't see how so many admitting to entertaining the idea is all that surprising.
This kind of discrimination and derision against people with mental illness is why so many don't get treated, which adds to the needless and senseless deaths of suicide.
Also-- I agree with Rubi. I'm sure it's something most people have entertained and then rejected at various low points in their lives. I don't see how so many admitting to entertaining the idea is all that surprising.
No, you're right. Seriously contemplating suicide isn't completely fucked up in the head. Me stating that they're not quite sane actually prevents them from seeking help and leads to the taking of their own life....
Geez snoozan, thanks for pointing that out, I'd never figured it in that way....I think I'll just jump off a building now that youve set me straight.
???
I'm sorry, but I take umbrage at being called "fucked up." That's a value judgement based on an illness. That is fucked up.
I've thought about it...but I don't like death. I'd feel so much like a hypocrite if I took my own life, LOL.
Besides, it wouldn't be fair to the people in my life to end it.
...and for the record, I do feel like people who take their own lives are very selfish. If you take your own life, you're only thinking about yourself. The fact of the matter is that you do need help...and denying it and rationalizing for it does not make it any better. Ending your life will not make anything better. It only makes things worse...for the people you leave behind.
Besides, it wouldn't be fair to the people in my life to end it.
QFT
...and for the record, I do feel like people who take their own lives are very selfish. If you take your own life, you're only thinking about yourself. The fact of the matter is that you do need help...and denying it and rationalizing for it does not make it any better. Ending your life will not make anything better. It only makes things worse...for the people you leave behind.
- Eva,
This argument has always struck me as completely hypocritical. It's a complaint about how the death of someone affects you. And you're calling that person selfish? You just made that person's death about your own pain! Talk about selfishness.
Anyone who has never been in enough pain to just want it to stop by any means necessary will not ever understand or respect why someone would contemplate suicide, let alone someone who might actually go through with it.
That said, it's pretty obvious that I've thought seriously about it. I'm not brave enough to actually go through with it. I've wished for the courage on many occasions, but that's never been granted. Currently, I'm happy that my wish has never been granted, but I've no doubt I'll curse this fact later on.
No. That doesn't make it selfish. You're focusing on the one person that is hurt. What about the 30 people connected to the one person that was hurt? 30 people are selfish?!
Come on. You're not thinking clearly.
- Eva,
If they're mostly upset because the person is gone and out of their lives, then yes. All of those people are selfish. I'm thinking quite clearly, thankyouverymuch. You've obviously never been in the kind of insurmountable personal pain that would cause you to seek out any means necessary to alleviate said pain.
When I hear someone has killed themselves, I feel sorriest that the person was in that kind of pain that death was their only feasible solution. I understand that pain and I can sympathise with the feeling of hopelessness.
However. I feel that it's an incredibly courageous act. For someone who is incredibly depressed, it's often hard to get the motivation to do anything. To face death is an amazing strength. No one knows what happens after we die--not for sure. To go into something completely unknown because the present pain is simply too much is a bravery I don't think I will ever have. And it's a final grasp at control over one's life, when one feels completely hopeless. It's taking final control over one's life. I don't think that's selfish. It's oddly admirable, but with very unfortunate consequences for those left behind.
People get over grief. I know that sounds cold and heartless but it's true. The kind of pain that makes someone contemplate suicide isn't anything near grief; there's simply no comparison.
Thank you.
It's very hard for people to conceptualize the pain one has to be in to even contemplate such a definitive act when they haven't experienced it.
As badly as I feel for the family and friends of people who commit suicide, it's not something I feel I can condemn someone for. It makes me sad for everyone involved. I feel just as bad for the person who thinks suicide is the only option as I do for those who must pick up the pieces.
If anyone is interested in reading a book that deals intelligently and compassionately with the whys of suicide, read a book called Night Falls Fast by Kay Redfield Jamison. It addresses a lot of the topics touched upon here in great detail. This book by the same author is also a good read on her own story.
Although I completely understand your sentiment, I've always thought that it takes a special kind of courage to live on despite the fact that you are in unbearable pain that you may never fully recover from. That is also a journey into the unknown, and one which is not definitive the way suicide is. It also takes courage to face the decision to live on in such pain each and every moment of they day-- and that, to me, is a testament to human strength and endurance.
- Eva,
No prob.
By 17 years old, I'd gone to more funerals than most people probably attend in their lives. My own depression kicked in during my third year of college. It's a subject in which I'm pretty well versed. In conversations like these, I'm generally the only one offering up my particular viewpoint. I do so because I think it's important that people who don't get it be offered up a slice of the thought process involved in the act itself. It's certainly not an easy decision to come to and I wish everyone were more aware of that.
No doubt! But it's not always a choice to continue on. Some of us just lack the bollocks to take complete control and therefore are forced to go on because there really isn't another choice. It's not always about strength and endurance, but it does tend to wind up being that way after the fact.
Please let's keep the male machismo bullshit out of this thread. Thanks. The fact that you have never contemplated suicide simply means to me that your life has never really been all that difficult. Everyone is able to comprehend physical pain and the gravity of it because everyone experiences it at some point or another in the course of his life, but there is no guarantee that any given individual will experience considerable emotional pain and it is quite improbable that an individual will experience the depths of despair and emotional distress that human beings can reach. Therefore, there is no shortage of people out there - many of them arrogant, self-absorbed, insensitive, macho, tough-guy douches who live privileged lives free of discrimination and persecution and any real hardship - who utterly fail at understanding the plight of suicidally depressed and who often, for their misunderstanding and their nauseating and contemptible macho frames of mind, actually go so far as to deprecate and malign those who are unfortunate enough to be so depressed. I have experienced all sorts of physical pains, including but not limited to kidney stones, broken arms and legs, being stabbed, etc... and I have also experienced what I imagine to have been the limits of human emotional suffering; let me tell you that true despair - not the "oh, I've lost my job/girlfriend" blues - is infinitely worse than the physical pain that I have experienced. I've tried to commit suicide about 8 or so times, but I haven't succeeded due to the lack of the proper resources (I don't have access to firearms or anything more lethal than booze and drugs.) Those attempts were not cries for help, by the way, since no one found out about them until long after the fact.
Anyways, what I am getting at is that there are some things in life that simply can't be understood until experienced. I am sure you couldn't imagine what sex was like as a kid, nor do I imagine that you were able to comprehend what it is to be drunk before you first became drunk. Those experiences were utterly incomprehensible to you until you had them and the same is true of hell. You will not know hell until you've experienced it, but that will probably never happen. And that is the reason why the mentally ill are treated so profoundly poorly and with not a shred of compassion in general: the average happy-go-lucky, never-gone-through-any-real-difficulty asshats can't empathize with them in the way they can empathize with a person who's gone through intense physical pain - something far more immediate, palpable, salient, familiar, and, thus, understandable to the *******.
Andro man-
Please remove your trolling ass from the premises. Thanks.
Viking1, why do you think no one would care? I don't know you, but I would hate to think that you reached out for help like this and I didn't try to let you see that you are actually liked. I am sure there are people who would care. YOU are the result of ONE cell out of 40 million cells that started the race for the prize egg. Your one cell made it ahead of the other 39,999,999!!! That is pretty special in my book. I knowthat is corny or whatever the smartasses will call it, but it is the simple truth. NO ONE is worth taking your life over.
Yes, I've contemplated it. I planned it. BUT I was saved from it by one of the greatest women in the world in my opinion.
- Eva,
Well, to be fair, this question is asking whether or not people have ever considered it, not whether or not people are currently considering suicide. So while I've personally considered suicide as an option, I don't right now because I'm just not that sad. Things are going alright and I'm cool with that. In fact, I'm hoping it holds. :wink:
It does go to show though that mental health is often overlooked in the grand scheme of things. Humans figure out to deal with things so that their appearance or affect on others is minimal. People are always shocked when I reveal that I have a weekly therapist appointment, that I'm on antidepressants, that I have chronic depression, etc. They don't see it. That's just how I've adapted. Depression is so widely misunderstood, I've learned to just kinda hide it so as to save myself the pat responses of "Cheer up! Things can't be that bad!"
As if the concept of simply "cheering up" had never occurred to me before....
Look, I have tried to kill myself one time before. And since then I've thought about it, but then I think about the impact that my death would have on other people. That plus I feel there are a few things I'd like to live to see...a challenge I've given myself, per ce.
Look, selfishness is when you're ONLY concerned with how ONLY you will feel at any given time. If 30 people are hurt because one person committed suicide, those 30 people CAN'T be selfish, the person who committed suicide was selfish, because the person who committed suicide was ONLY thinking about the hurt that THEY felt and not the hurt that they would impact on the 30 people around them.
I'm not saying that you or whoever doesn't feel pain and that the pain seems unbearable, but there are other ways to alleviate pain than to just say "I'm not going to deal with pain anymore." Because in suicide, you're not just alleviating all pain, you are also alleviating happiness, pleasure, etc.
You've got to be a very selfish person to even CONSIDER calling someone else "selfish" for feeling sad that you would commit suicide. It sounds more like you feel that they are selfish for not stopping you. I think that a person who is contemplating suicide should stop being introspective for the answers and seek something on the outside. When emotions are involved, the thoughts are not particularly clear.
Look, selfishness is when you're ONLY concerned with how ONLY you will feel at any given time. If 30 people are hurt because one person committed suicide, those 30 people CAN'T be selfish, the person who committed suicide was selfish, because the person who committed suicide was ONLY thinking about the hurt that THEY felt and not the hurt that they would impact on the 30 people around them.
I'm not saying that you or whoever doesn't feel pain and that the pain seems unbearable, but there are other ways to alleviate pain than to just say "I'm not going to deal with pain anymore." Because in suicide, you're not just alleviating all pain, you are also alleviating happiness, pleasure, etc.
You've got to be a very selfish person to even CONSIDER calling someone else "selfish" for feeling sad that you would commit suicide. It sounds more like you feel that they are selfish for not stopping you. I think that a person who is contemplating suicide should stop being introspective for the answers and seek something on the outside. When emotions are involved, the thoughts are not particularly clear.
QFT
I'm glad the meds are stopping you from feeling sad.
What happens when something bad happens in your life? Do you just up the dosage?
And what about feelings in general? Are they all dimmed down or just the sad ones?
Does your body develop a resistance to the drugs over time? coz drugs tend to do that
This goes to something really important that many people overlook. Mental health is poorly understood in most places and by most people. Those who have not had major depression tend to believe that people who are suicidal are weak, lack courage, attention seeking, and ultimately selfish. They are unable or unwilling to empathize.
This is where public health education has largely failed in many countries. Major depression is an actual physical illness. The brains of those with major depression do not functioning normally. Chemical compositions and secretions becomes altered and these changes can radically change a person's personality and thought processes.
The mind of a person suffering from major depression is subject to the effects of the disease. Suicidal ideation is but one of a number of symptoms brought about the chemical changes that take place because of the disease. To judge sufferers of major depression by the standards you would judge a healthy person is cruel. It's like saying someone with cerebral palsy only uses a wheel chair because he is lazy. Perhaps this is because it's difficult to understand that those with major depression have anything wrong with them; that their thought processes are the same as those without the disease. Sufferers can look as healthy as anyone else. You cannot see the changes the disease has caused in any other manner except through behavior and affect save via MRI imaging and nobody I know has an MRI or a radiologist qualified to read the results in their living room.
It's essential to understand that the thinking of people with major depression is always under the influence of the disease. When depressed people speak, it is through the veil of the disease. When depressed people act, the impetus is sparked by the disease. The person one once knew is being changed by an insidious series of chemical changes that make normal judgement difficult to impossible. It is not easy to be a friend or family member living with a person suffering from major depression. Interactions are often frought with anger and apathy. The level of frustration with the depressed person can be so intense that the people the sufferer needs are driven away just when the sufferer needs them most. Being supportive of the ill not easy no matter what the problem is and sufferers of major depression tend not to get the support they need because those around them fail to recognize that they are interacting with a disease and not the person being controlled by it.
Not all pharmaceutical therapies work for all people. Some do not work at all. The brain is still the most poorly understood organ in the human body and there is no way to know which drug or therapy will work for which person until it is tried. Sometimes all it takes is a course of drugs to correct major depression. Sometimes other therapies like cognitive or Freudian analysis work best. Other times the only thing that works is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
There is debate over whether psychotherapy is useful or not. It can be for some people. Humans, unlike nearly all other animals, can cause their minds to do things voluntarily. In doing so we subconciously use chemical neuro transmitters to access the thought we want. If I want to imagine a green cube I can do so. That is using my brain's chemistry willfully. Therapy can similarly stimulate the person with major depression to gradually rebalance the brain's chemical process by forcing it to excrete the necessary balancing chemicals via patterned thought processes. It may not work all the time, no psycho or chemical therapy does, but it is a useful tool to complement psychopharmeceuticals and can enhance their effectiveness.
Even now, after my own two very serious battles with major depression, I have a difficult time dealing with those who are going through the disease themselves. It's a challenge to always stay in the mindset that the disease is in control of the person I'm interacting with. I imagine it is moreso with those who have never gone through it themselves. The most I can do is urge those with friends or family who are suffering from major depression to be supportive and patient as possible.
Depression is not, "the blues." It is not a feeling of sadness though it may manifest itself as such early in the process. By the time major depression sets in, emotion becomes stripped entirely. There is no joy, no sorrow, just numbness. A room full of the people you love most could spend hours telling you how wonderful you are but you won't believe them. You can spend time doing what you love, reading your favorite books, listening to your favorite music, watching your favorite movies, eating your favorite food, and none of it will do anything to give you any pleasure. In a sense you become a Vulcan, a walking machine of self-constructed logic. When you lose the ability to love or become angry then the end is close because then you are left with no emotions at all. Life becomes a series of meaningless tasks with no pleasure, no displeasure, no purpose. The future is simply a series of the same things repeated over and over again. In that state, suicide becomes attractive because the point of living is entirely lost. You're a functioning vegetable and if that is the case, then why continue with it? Just before you decide to take your own life there is a rush of emotions but they're like trying to listen to a conversation just out of earshot. What's important is simply completing the task of ending your own life, doing so in such a manner that seems reasonable. By then any empathy with those you used to love is long gone and the disease has convinced you that while the cleanup may present people with a minor inconvenience, you won't be missed.
Then it's done.
All of that has nothing to do with the person and everything to do with the disease of major depression and what it does to the person afflicted with the disease. Please remember that no matter how hard it may be to rationalize. It may save the life of someone you love. Try to be supportive, not to listen to the disease talking to you through the mouth of your loved one. Try to help them get help, reinforce how much you care about them, and never nag. There's not much you can do other than to demonstrate your support and love by literally being there. The truth is there is little you can do. Help take care of pets, maybe do some chores, or just sit quietly with the person. My single greatest consolation was my dog and he never said anything. He just loved me completely and without question. He did more than any of my family or friends because he didn't question me, didn't badger me, didn't get angry with me, didn't try to cheer me up. He was just there, quietly demonstrating his fidelity all the time. Christ I loved that dog.
Well, there it is.
This is where public health education has largely failed in many countries. Major depression is an actual physical illness. The brains of those with major depression do not functioning normally. Chemical compositions and secretions becomes altered and these changes can radically change a person's personality and thought processes.
The mind of a person suffering from major depression is subject to the effects of the disease. Suicidal ideation is but one of a number of symptoms brought about the chemical changes that take place because of the disease. To judge sufferers of major depression by the standards you would judge a healthy person is cruel. It's like saying someone with cerebral palsy only uses a wheel chair because he is lazy. Perhaps this is because it's difficult to understand that those with major depression have anything wrong with them; that their thought processes are the same as those without the disease. Sufferers can look as healthy as anyone else. You cannot see the changes the disease has caused in any other manner except through behavior and affect save via MRI imaging and nobody I know has an MRI or a radiologist qualified to read the results in their living room.
It's essential to understand that the thinking of people with major depression is always under the influence of the disease. When depressed people speak, it is through the veil of the disease. When depressed people act, the impetus is sparked by the disease. The person one once knew is being changed by an insidious series of chemical changes that make normal judgement difficult to impossible. It is not easy to be a friend or family member living with a person suffering from major depression. Interactions are often frought with anger and apathy. The level of frustration with the depressed person can be so intense that the people the sufferer needs are driven away just when the sufferer needs them most. Being supportive of the ill not easy no matter what the problem is and sufferers of major depression tend not to get the support they need because those around them fail to recognize that they are interacting with a disease and not the person being controlled by it.
Not all pharmaceutical therapies work for all people. Some do not work at all. The brain is still the most poorly understood organ in the human body and there is no way to know which drug or therapy will work for which person until it is tried. Sometimes all it takes is a course of drugs to correct major depression. Sometimes other therapies like cognitive or Freudian analysis work best. Other times the only thing that works is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
There is debate over whether psychotherapy is useful or not. It can be for some people. Humans, unlike nearly all other animals, can cause their minds to do things voluntarily. In doing so we subconciously use chemical neuro transmitters to access the thought we want. If I want to imagine a green cube I can do so. That is using my brain's chemistry willfully. Therapy can similarly stimulate the person with major depression to gradually rebalance the brain's chemical process by forcing it to excrete the necessary balancing chemicals via patterned thought processes. It may not work all the time, no psycho or chemical therapy does, but it is a useful tool to complement psychopharmeceuticals and can enhance their effectiveness.
Even now, after my own two very serious battles with major depression, I have a difficult time dealing with those who are going through the disease themselves. It's a challenge to always stay in the mindset that the disease is in control of the person I'm interacting with. I imagine it is moreso with those who have never gone through it themselves. The most I can do is urge those with friends or family who are suffering from major depression to be supportive and patient as possible.
Depression is not, "the blues." It is not a feeling of sadness though it may manifest itself as such early in the process. By the time major depression sets in, emotion becomes stripped entirely. There is no joy, no sorrow, just numbness. A room full of the people you love most could spend hours telling you how wonderful you are but you won't believe them. You can spend time doing what you love, reading your favorite books, listening to your favorite music, watching your favorite movies, eating your favorite food, and none of it will do anything to give you any pleasure. In a sense you become a Vulcan, a walking machine of self-constructed logic. When you lose the ability to love or become angry then the end is close because then you are left with no emotions at all. Life becomes a series of meaningless tasks with no pleasure, no displeasure, no purpose. The future is simply a series of the same things repeated over and over again. In that state, suicide becomes attractive because the point of living is entirely lost. You're a functioning vegetable and if that is the case, then why continue with it? Just before you decide to take your own life there is a rush of emotions but they're like trying to listen to a conversation just out of earshot. What's important is simply completing the task of ending your own life, doing so in such a manner that seems reasonable. By then any empathy with those you used to love is long gone and the disease has convinced you that while the cleanup may present people with a minor inconvenience, you won't be missed.
Then it's done.
All of that has nothing to do with the person and everything to do with the disease of major depression and what it does to the person afflicted with the disease. Please remember that no matter how hard it may be to rationalize. It may save the life of someone you love. Try to be supportive, not to listen to the disease talking to you through the mouth of your loved one. Try to help them get help, reinforce how much you care about them, and never nag. There's not much you can do other than to demonstrate your support and love by literally being there. The truth is there is little you can do. Help take care of pets, maybe do some chores, or just sit quietly with the person. My single greatest consolation was my dog and he never said anything. He just loved me completely and without question. He did more than any of my family or friends because he didn't question me, didn't badger me, didn't get angry with me, didn't try to cheer me up. He was just there, quietly demonstrating his fidelity all the time. Christ I loved that dog.
Well, there it is.
- 36DD,
Yes, I have thought about it and planned it out. I try to rationalize when I am feeling this way but the feeling is so overwhelming at times I can't get out from under it. I suffer from depression and have been on anti-depressants for years. Lately the thought has been rearing its ugly head and I keep fighting back by whatever means I have to or I call my therapist, anything...It gets really difficult because at times like that I tend to isolate myself which is exactly what I shouldn't do but at the same time I don't want to burden anyone or be misunderstood by uninformed people that either think they are helping or just don't give a shit. I think of my kids and I hang on with all my might.
There is a difference between clinical depression and what we commonly refer to as feeling depressed or sad. There's a difference between an appropriate emotional response to something that happens in one's life that may include pain, sadness, or grief and clinical depression. Interestingly, depression can actually dampen emotions-- where there's no up or down, just a constant feeling of apathy and emptiness. Many people, when clinically depressed, react the same way to, say, a family member dying as they do to winning the lottery. There's no range of emotion, which I'll get to later in this post.
One common misconception about depression is that it's a result of something bad happening in one's life. This isn't always the case. Though depression may start that way, clinical depression is a different animal, and it's a chemical imbalance in the brain that we are only now starting to understand.
Most people only up their medication dosages when they have a mood episode, not when they just plain feel bad. In my case, I know the difference. There's a component to true sadness that still makes you feel connected to the universe, a component that is conspicuously absent when you're depressed. I feel sad, stressed, and frustrated a lot, but for the most part it's not something that requires changing medication, but instead requires introspection, changing behavior, exercise, and/or just waiting it out.
This is another common misconception. The goal of treating mental illness is to give a patient a full range of normal, healthy emotions expressed at appropriate times. That means ups, downs and everything in between. The goal isn't to make people somehow artificially happy. Depression isn't a normal emotion, it's a deadening of the spirit, if that makes any sense. Many people also suffer from mania, which is the opposite of depression-- being too "up." If you've ever done amphetamines or other stimulants, mania can be very similar-- you don't sleep, you don't eat, you get very focused, and you feel like you're on top of the world. This high feeling, though, is not reflective of what is going on in the real world and is an inappropriate response to external stimuli. The trouble that most people have, even experienced mental health professionals, is determining in some patients what a full range of emotions is and whether their pain or euphoria are appropriate emotional responses or are clinically significant. In some cases it's obvious-- a patient who is actively hallucinating or a patient who can't get out of bed in the morning are pretty clear cut cases.
Unfortunately, mental illness also effects real emotions. In my case, I am bipolar, but I also have emotions-- one of which is fear of another severe mood episode. They tend to get tangled up with one another, and that's something a therapist can help with. Unfortunately, therapy can't work unless the primary mood episode is treated enough that one can actively participate in the therapy.
If you ask most people who have had a major mood episode, they will tell you that the medicine neither made their problems go away, stopped them from caring about their problems, or made them suddenly happy. Instead, they give you some relief from pain (or euphoria in the case of mania) so that you're able to deal with things rationally.
Again, depression and mania tend to blunt the range of emotions, which treatment hopes to bring back, not the opposite.
This is something that's still debated in the psychiatric world, but generally people do have breakthrough episodes where they need to reevaluate their medication dosages. For me, I have actually reduced my medication dosages as well as increased them as necessary. This is pretty common. It's something this is generally not seen in addictions, which seems to be what you were referring to.
There's a huge difference between drugs that create artificial highs and states of mind and drugs that seek to restore a healthy balance in the body. I always say that I don't use drugs recreationally because I take drugs daily to help me feel normal.
I think you'd agree that cocaine and drugs that treat diabetes are completely different in what they seek to do. In the same way as mental illness, Type 1 diabetics can help control their disease with diet, but no diet is going to fix the diabetes completely. In the case of mental illness, therapt and mental hygeine are analougous to a diabetic's diet.
It's very hard to understand what true clinical mood episodes are until you've experienced them. My mother didn't understand mine for years until she had a major mood episode. She suddenly "got it" after that because she'd been there. I don't blame anyone for not understanding what it's like to be depressed, manic, or psychotic, but I do expect that people view mental illness just as they do any other disease. In the end, they are all some sort of process in the body that goes haywire.
As an example, my husband has a heart arrhythmia that makes his heart beat erratically and very quickly. Sometimes it's stress induced, other times it's out of nowhere. The analogy that I draw is this-- everyone's heart beats. We can't live without that, obviously. However, in his case, for whatever reason, it just starts beating the wrong way. It's still beating, but in such a way that it's actually harmful to the body (and potentially fatal). It's the same thing with mental illness. Your brain chemicals are working fine and then for whatever reason, they stop functioning the way that they are meant to in such a way that it hurts the person. Both are adequately treated with both medication and non-medicinal treatments, normally together.
I know this was a very long post, but I hope it helps.