We are made up of a mind and body. In comparison to the
body, which has recognisable unconscious elements (e.g. we don’t control our
heart beat) the mind is seen as conscious and therefore closer to the centre of
who we are; control, moral agency and personal responsibility are seen to
emanate from this conscious centre (after all we can create thoughts, can’t
we?). In this view, the body is more peripheral and is something carrying less
personal responsibility. Therefore, when the mind is ill, prejudice sees it as
a failure of conscious control and the sufferer is somehow to blame. Illnesses
of the mind are seen as having internal, personal causes. In contrast, when the
body is ill the illness feels like it is imposed on us by an external cause and
is fought by mechanisms of the body outside of conscious control.
This prejudice is flawed. It fails to acknowledge that the
mind also has unconscious elements outside of direct control. For example, a
susceptibility to depression is part of the structure and function of the
brain. This is part of our thrownness (the state in which we exist) and
thrownness is blameless (in the same way we didn’t choose whether we were male
of female).
Despite having no choice over the fact of mental illness, we
are not helpless: we can choose our reaction to it in the same way we choose to
put a plaster cast on a broken leg to help it heal.
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