The Philosophical And Personal Aspects Of Mental Health

Depression, anxiety, emotional numbness, anhedonia, psychosis, and other mental health issues can derail most of a person's life even if they had no major problems to worry about beforehand or no other issues besides the mental illness once it starts.  Mental illness is a philosophical subject because all ideas and all parts of reality, including consciousness, experiences, and self-awareness, are philosophical.  The deeply personal aspects of mental illnesses simply take the spotlight away from this for many non-rationalists.  Only when embraced as a very abstract subject pertaining to numerous key logical truths about consciousness and individuality and as a highly personal part of life is mental health fully.

Worth noting is that unlike depression, anxiety, emotional numbness, or other such conditions, which a person can immediately know they have with absolute certainty simply by introspecting and correctly identifying their experiences without making assumptions, something like psychosis cannot be proven to be a condition one has because with or without psychosis, it is impossible for a person to actually prove that they are not hallucinating most of their perceptions of the external world.  There is an inherent (given human limitations) epistemological barrier to even truly knowing if one has psychosis at all.  This is an example of how the more overtly philosophical and personal sides of mental health overlap, as the metaphysical and epistemological issues inevitably impact people in a very personal sense even if they are in no way rationalistic in their comprehension of various conditions.

Having a mental disorder or illness does not mean a person is or will soon be irrational, though.  Someone struggling with one of the aforementioned mental illnesses or others is not fated to make philosophical assumptions or errors, incapable of handling relationships, or unable to understand himself or herself very thoroughly just because of their condition.  However, resolving or lessening the burden will still make people feel more connected with themselves even if they are already highly introspective and self-aware, which in turn can facilitate at least how a connection to reason, to their environment, or to others is experienced.  There are immense personal benefits to taking mental health far more seriously than so much of present American society does.

This is why it is in everyone's best interest to not misunderstand or ignore logical and introspective facts related to mental health.  A person's explicitly philosophical depths of self-awareness, or at least the way they experience their self-awareness, and their core psychological stability will have the power to affect much of their life.  Understanding the way the philosophical and personal sides of mental health intertwine--yes, everything is philosophical, but the personal side of mental health is lived in light of more abstract truths--gives people the freedom to make progress in many other parts of their life, spilling over into deeper introspection, a greater ease of reasoning out or revisiting abstract philosophical truths, thriving emotions, workplace stability, and greater fulfillment in relationships, and so on.  It is nothing to be scoffed at or neglected.