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I'm 65. I remember Karen Carpenter dying, and everyone saying she died of a heart attack, brought on by trying to recover from anorexia. It wasn't a secret.
Most people didn't know what anorexia was until Carpenter's death. Then it was still confusing, there was a lot of controversy about it because mental illness just wasn't talked about enough that people would understand something like starving oneself to death.
Around that time there was an obsession with ultra thinness in women as well. The skinny girls in the early Saturday night live cast all had eating disorders because of pressure to be ultra thin. No one knew that at the time until they talked about it years later.
The yutes here are probably too young to remember the name Thomas Eagleton. Eagleton was chosen as Presidential candidate George McGovern's running mate.
About two weeks later, he dropped out because the media found out that HE HAD SEEN A PSYCHIATRIST. Yes, indeed, the horror. He had suffered from depression in the 1960s and been hospitalized for treatment. No way no how could someone who had seen a psychiatrist be on a presidential ticket.
No, people kept it quiet if they saw a psychiatrist. Suicides were covered up. In my own family, I remember the story of my mother's cousin, a young married woman with an eight-month-old baby, finding her husband dead of a heart attack when he didn't return to the house after saying he was going outside to get some firewood for their fireplace.
When I was a adult, I found out that she had actually found him hanging from a tree behind the garage, but it was the 70s, and they couldn't let anyone know that he had died by suicide. Too shameful.
When I was six years old, a same-age cousin died of ieukemia. I developed a terrible fear of death after that. Would not turn on light switches or go near anything electrical because I was sure God was going to kill me, too , since I HAD prayed for my cousin but God killed her anyway, at least that's how I saw it. I thought something I called The Dark Thing was following me, but then one day the thought crossed my mind that if I took exactly 18 steps down the hall to my bedroom, it could not enter my room. My mother finally yelled at me to stop acting the way I was, so I learned how to hide it. And that began a lifetime of counting and doing secret rituals inside my head to prevent "it" from happening, whatever "it" my be. Thoughts and images ran through my head at all times that I could not tell anyone about. I just thought I was weird. When I was in my forties, I found out it was OCD.
Eventually I asked my mother, "You KNEW something was wrong with me when I was little. Why didn't you get me help?" She said, "I prayed for you. I didn't know what else to do. We just didn't take kids to psychiatrists back in the 1960s or talk to people about things like that."
We've learned a lot since then. I don't think it's so much that people weren't aware of problems, they just didn't know much about them.
Take ADHD for example, as that is a fairly simple condition, and one I'm familiar with. Back in my day in the 60's and 70's those kids were usually labeled as brats, difficult, spoiled, discipline problems, and basically written off as a bad job of parenting. It was failure, and shameful.
When my son was diagnosed with it in the early nineties there was still some of that attitude around and many people didn't really understand what ADHD was. There was still stigma attached to it.
Nowadays most people are aware that the ADHD mind processes things in a different way and that there are ways of coping with it, from medicine to behavioral modifications. Having a child with ADD is something people are comfortable acknowledging and seeking help for now, whereas in the past that was not often the case.
Had not considered that , looked it up. It's indeed true that it falls within the mental health category.
Still about 20 years behind in my mind. Can't totally get on board with the extreme uprise occurring in the childhood diagnosis.
Overall there is truth in the more we know the less likely we are to conceal these medical ails. Acceptance comes slowly.
I The struggles don't change for the afflicted though... And that's the part that still continues to be shadowed ... We don't want to talk about cousin Joe who still twitches or talks to the toaster.
Well certainly it was "less discussed" or even "acknowledged" by the commoner.
Depression, schizophrenia, bi polar, Mania, multi personality disorders, paranoia, Just to name some that were " deemed"- taboo to discuss or mention.
My parent was a nurse- Did a three month stint at a psychiatric ward during her RN certification. A famous academy award star was brought there to be monitored - given reprieve...Because gosh knows ONE didn't "label" the condition and seek proper medical therapy. It was just a place to "settle" the nerves and off he was to go again. It would be later in this Gents life that he acknowledged his mental psychiatric condition.
My Parent said, This was one place where his acting skills did not aide in his diagnosis and prognosis. He was for lack of a better phrase- Off his rocker. His delusions kept him there longer then he wanted.
That wasn't by any chance Peter Sellers, was it? He was a phenomenal actor, but I heard people of his generation talking about how he would lose himself to his acting so much, very effectively taking on a variety of personas, that he didn't know who he was anymore. He became disoriented, or something like that was the gossip. I've looked up some of his films, and found them enjoyable. Great actor!
In one of his films, a teen girl was seeing a psychiatrist, mainly because her mother was the one with the problem, but of course, she couldn't admit that to herself, so she sent her daughter to weekly sessions with a psychoanalyst, they called it. So apparently, in the 60's some people did see mental health care professionals. One gets the impression, that back then, it was a "luxury" only the wealthy could afford.
That wasn't by any chance Peter Sellers, was it? He was a phenomenal actor, but I heard people of his generation talking about how he would lose himself to his acting so much, very effectively taking on a variety of personas, that he didn't know who he was anymore. He became disoriented, or something like that was the gossip. I've looked up some of his films, and found them enjoyable. Great actor!
In one of his films, a teen girl was seeing a psychiatrist, mainly because her mother was the one with the problem, but of course, she couldn't admit that to herself, so she sent her daughter to weekly sessions with a psychoanalyst, they called it. So apparently, in the 60's some people did see mental health care professionals. One gets the impression, that back then, it was a "luxury" only the wealthy could afford.
I think there's some truth to that. I used to be puzzled at all the celebrities who would be hospitalized for "exhaustion". Have you ever known one single person in your real life who was hospitalized for exhaustion? If you're exhausted, you get some sleep. That's it.
Now, of course, we know that's a euphemism for a mental breakdown of some sort.
One mental image I have of the way that mental illness was seen in the past, is through films. Really, it can help to understand how the prevailing thinking about something just...kinda was...during a prior era, to watch old movies. Because I married a much older man, he's had me watch a lot of movies from the 50s, 60s, 70s. I remembered the ones from the 80s (my childhood) and 90s (my teen years.)
He likes Woody Allen films (I know) and I've watched one or two with him. All the personal stories of the guy aside, I don't care for him as an actor. But notably in some of these movies, he was this neurotic guy who talked about seeing an "analyst" and at first I was like, "a what now?" Because that's a professional title I've held but it was data analytics and I could tell he didn't mean that! I guess that's what they referred to therapy as. But it was this whole thing, he'd mumble it with shame, people would give him sideways glances, and he'd then go on to act in goofy and antisocial ways throughout the story.
But yeah, people really saw all of this very, very differently even when I was growing up. Pretty much any "out" group was a joke or a monster of some kind. Daffy Duck or Private Pyle. And that's not even the 60s, you don't have to go back that far.
And my parents were pretty sure there was something seriously wrong with me as a kid. Just because I didn't really act like they wanted a little girl to act, being obsessed with prettiness and doll babies, maybe, though probably there was more to it. I developed very picky eating habits. I had no friends. I was a weird kid. They took me to several different psychologists, counselors... No one diagnosed me.
Turns out I very definitely have ADHD, and it's crystal clear to me NOW... But because I wasn't a boy, and I was too cowed by abusive adults to run around screaming at home and in classrooms, being a loud and distracting nuisance, it did not look like the early idea of ADHD. Not "hyper" enough in obvious ways. Though I'm kind of glad, because as an adult I did try Ritalin once (prescribed) and I've found that I really don't do OK with the side effects of head-meds. I'm much better off deploying deliberate tools and tricks of my own to manage my focus.
No, people kept it quiet if they saw a psychiatrist. Suicides were covered up. In my own family, I remember the story of my mother's cousin, a young married woman with an eight-month-old baby, finding her husband dead of a heart attack when he didn't return to the house after saying he was going outside to get some firewood for their fireplace.
When I was a adult, I found out that she had actually found him hanging from a tree behind the garage, but it was the 70s, and they couldn't let anyone know that he had died by suicide. Too shameful.
Not quite the same, but with the turnover of Roe v. Wade, a lot of people started sharing stories of how when they were kids, their cousin was "sent away" or their grandma almost died (or did die) from "surgery" Lots of things were very common and yet not talked about in the past.
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Had not considered that , looked it up. It's indeed true that it falls within the mental health category.
Still about 20 years behind in my mind. Can't totally get on board with the extreme uprise occurring in the childhood diagnosis.
I was recently diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, and it's been such a relief to know that things I've been struggling with my entire life aren't just because I'm lazy, disorganized, or lacking in discipline and willpower. It's an actual condition that has a basis in brain chemistry, and I can learn how to deal with it and not bend over backwards trying to be "normal." It's not a bad thing when people get diagnosed rather than not.
Believe it or not... There didn't used to be the expectation that "normal" life was happy and worry-free; therefore, feeling depressed or anxious wasn't "abnormal." The idea that there's something wrong with you if you're not all smiles is a fairly recent one in history.
Very true. The availability of drugs to suppress unwanted thoughts emotions and behaviors led to mental health being Big Business. The reality behind our current paradigm of mental health treatment reveals a Big Fat Lie.
I’m 67 and growing up in the uk it was not talked about generally, it was mentioned in a round about way. We had a neighbour whose daughter had anorexia and had died but we never were told that and when I asked I was told she just wouldn’t eat. Why she wouldn't eat was never discussed. People with mental health issues or conditions were just quietly placed into psych facilities, or breakdowns referred to as someone having a bit of a turn.
The term mental retardation is no longer used and was replaced by intellectual disability.
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