Here is that famous poem, This Be The Verse, by British poet Philip Larkin for your enjoyment (I love it when others write my blogposts for me!):
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
I would recommend that this poem be put on display in the family involvement services, where I work,
in the reception area. I don't think they would be amused. They have been trying to rehabilitate the role of the family in our clients' mental health recovery and my feelings about this are, to say the least, rather mixed. Family involvement for my process of recovery would only have made me worse because it was my own family that traumatized me. Both my parents had incredibly narrow, closed minds when it came to anything related to mental health, especially my father, and I don't think they would have taken at all kindly to any suggestion that I was ill, or that they had played a significant role in making me ill. I can only say that, thank God, my treatment occurred later in life when they were no longer available to worsen things for me and I had only a private psychiatrist who was not terribly keen on family involvement, given his years of experience and wisdom.
Mexicans often tell me that because the family and social connections are so strong in their country
there is therefore very little mental illness in their country. This I would also like to dispute. In Mexico, as in other Latin American countries, the mental health services and diagnostic tools are way behind. It might also be said that neither do they fall into the North American trap of over diagnosis or needlessly pathologizing negative behaviour. For every sadness, grief and ill, we have a happy little pill! At any rate, family is always there for you in Latin America to cover your little fanny and maybe even to wipe it for you at times. No one is going to get diagnosed unless it's something really serious and unmanageable because the funding for decent public mental health services do not exist in most of those countries, and really, the extended family will simply cover for you in order to save face.
But the family, despite its destructive toxicity, is often all that we have and all we're ever going to have and maybe the best thing to do is to try our best to work with it, but to also know when to bail, when to politely tell mom and dad to go to hell and leave before they make their kids even worse and then try to provide our clients with every possible tool to help them towards self-empowerment and self-determination, which really is the only route to real mental health recovery and ongoing wellness.
I would recommend that this poem be put on display in the family involvement services, where I work,
in the reception area. I don't think they would be amused. They have been trying to rehabilitate the role of the family in our clients' mental health recovery and my feelings about this are, to say the least, rather mixed. Family involvement for my process of recovery would only have made me worse because it was my own family that traumatized me. Both my parents had incredibly narrow, closed minds when it came to anything related to mental health, especially my father, and I don't think they would have taken at all kindly to any suggestion that I was ill, or that they had played a significant role in making me ill. I can only say that, thank God, my treatment occurred later in life when they were no longer available to worsen things for me and I had only a private psychiatrist who was not terribly keen on family involvement, given his years of experience and wisdom.
Mexicans often tell me that because the family and social connections are so strong in their country
there is therefore very little mental illness in their country. This I would also like to dispute. In Mexico, as in other Latin American countries, the mental health services and diagnostic tools are way behind. It might also be said that neither do they fall into the North American trap of over diagnosis or needlessly pathologizing negative behaviour. For every sadness, grief and ill, we have a happy little pill! At any rate, family is always there for you in Latin America to cover your little fanny and maybe even to wipe it for you at times. No one is going to get diagnosed unless it's something really serious and unmanageable because the funding for decent public mental health services do not exist in most of those countries, and really, the extended family will simply cover for you in order to save face.
But the family, despite its destructive toxicity, is often all that we have and all we're ever going to have and maybe the best thing to do is to try our best to work with it, but to also know when to bail, when to politely tell mom and dad to go to hell and leave before they make their kids even worse and then try to provide our clients with every possible tool to help them towards self-empowerment and self-determination, which really is the only route to real mental health recovery and ongoing wellness.
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