Thanks to my Abnormal Psychology
class, I have recently learned that I have approximately half of the disorders
listed in the DSM-5. For those of you who may not know, abnormal psychology
deals with explaining all mental health disorders and the DSM-5 is where you go
to diagnose someone with one of these disorders. Many people who go through
medical school experience a similar feeling where they believe they have all of
the diseases they study so in depth. Most notably, I’ve learned that I am a
hoarder and I am delusional.
First,
the realization that I am a hoarder came to me whilst watching an episode of
TLC’s “Hoarders” one day in class. On this day in particular, my room was
especially messy and I was a tad stressed. By “a tad stressed” I mean I had 3
tests that week and I hadn’t sleep more than 8 collective hours in the past two
days. Hoarders keep excessive amounts of useless things, have emotional
attachments to these useless things, and eventually have to create pathways
through the junk to get around their house. While watching this show, I tried
to estimate how many useless coupons I had floating around my room. Most were
expired and the rest were for things I have never used in my life, such as oven
cleaner (I don’t have an oven) and cat litter (I hate cats). Many had tried to
convince me to get rid of these coupons, but I refused for some unknown reason.
Also, that morning, in order to get to class, I had to do something resembling
parkour to get out of my room. Add all this up and you will surely come to the
same conclusion I did- I am a hoarder. Someone should call TLC.
My
second revelation came to me while my professor was defining Delusional
disorder for the class. When I was 11, I cried on my birthday because I
realized my Hogwarts letter did not come and I had to accept once and for all
that Harry Potter was not real. If that's not delusional, I don’t know what is.
An example she gave of the delusions of someone with this disorder was the
belief in the end of the world because of the Mayan Calendar. In my mind, my
delusion and the Mayan one are on the same level of strange. The fact that my
delusions stopped there and were limited to that specific incident is
irrelevant. I have Delusional disorder and that’s all there is to it.
While
this may be a little dramatic, I actually have found a large amount of common
occurrences in the diagnosing criteria of many of the diseases we’ve studied in
class. Personally, though, I find that fact comforting rather than alarming.
Many people are seriously misinformed about mental health and mental disorders.
Just because someone has a mental disorder does not make him or her inhuman or
alien. If you ask me, no one is perfectly mentally healthy and everyone needs
help at some point in his or her life. I am well aware of the fact that I am
not actually a hoarder or delusional, but if I were, I would still be a person.
I feel like a lot of people put such an impenetrable stigma on mental illness
that they forget that sometimes. My abnormal psychology class has taught me
that everyone is mentally ill at some point, be it in a big or small way, and
that’s perfectly fine. Being a psychology major, I believe passionately in the
power of therapy and the field as a whole. While I know not everyone will share
that passion, I hope one day everyone will de-stigmatize mental illness and
strive to understand what that means.
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