Sympathy for the Mentally Ill

The opening.

He starts off with a really great humorous bit. Then the screen shows the topic. After a couple more jokes he asks why there are more mental disorders in the U.S. than in the Eastern world.

He says that (at that time) 51% of the beds in hospitals are occupied by mental patients. I checked and found an interesting site that covered the time a few years after the broadcast. It's worth checking out at https://mentalillnesspolicy.org/imd/shortage-hospital-beds.html.

Then he discusses two types of necessities, the first being physical. The three requirements are roof, rags (clothing) and rice (food). (At the time he's talking about Eastern peoples.) He then says the Western society is not under such a physical necessity. I don't know about that time but I think there is a physical necessity now and I think it's shown by the presence of so much people without places to live or food to eat. I think this is also related to the tremendous growth in the gap between poor and the ultra-rich in this country, a gap which is increasing.

Then he talks about the Moral necessity. He says it's the drive to live a good life and to save one's soul. He says in Western societies we have anxities, boredom and complexes. Then he goes into the types of mental disorders from which people can suffer.

He goes into the two types of mental disorders. He says the psychoses are 'constitutional' which means something is going wrong in the body. He says the neurosis is something that is acquired. An example of this would be a person with a superiority complex.

He says the psychotic patient is 'outside reality' to a great extent. He lives in a 'world of fantasy' such as a paranoid person. The neurotic person is more in a real world but has 'disturbed relations' about that world.

As examples he says the psychotic patient believes 2 and 2 equals 5 while the neurotic patient believes 2 plus 2 equals 4 but he's worried about it. He adds the psychotic has little responsibility while the neurotic has feelings of great responsibility. He wants to escape the responsibility.

He then raises the question of why so many people 'break' and become neurotic.

He goes into more information on the neurotic condition.

He says the essential drive of life is to establish meaning for our existence. If a person cannot establish at least some kind of meaning for their existence then they might develop a neurosis. He says we should call juvenile delinquents hoodlums. He says essentially that some of them are that way become no one (parents, teachers, etc) have tried to give them a purpose for their lives.

He then asks why do we have more sympathy for the physically sick then for the mentally ill? He says basically that people have experience with physical ills but not necessarily mental ills. Thus, it's not something they understand easily. We also attack a shame to mental sickness. We regard it as a stigma.

He says Jesus took upon himself the sufferings of people so we cannot say God does not know what suffering is like. He says we will talk to the physically sick but almost never to the mentally ill but they are entitled to sympathy just as much as the physically ill.

He says Jesus suffering on the cross was physical and his suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane was a mental suffering. He says when humans suffer they pull all their past suffering into that moment. Some people will also imagine their suffering continuing and pulling all of that in at the same time also.