Grieving is not a mental illness!
I cannot stress this enough. Drugs or, heaven forbid, Electroconvulsive therapy is not the answer.
I wish that all Medical Practitioners would attend a course in grief so that they will realise it is not a mental illness to grieve. After Emile died, my ex-doctor wanted to send me to a psychiatrist for drug therapy, but I refused to go. I don’t understand why these so-called professional people are under the impression that grief can be treated like any other illness.
One of the moms I am in contact with went to see a psychiatrist, and he prescribed a whole bunch of drugs for her to take. Her visit to this person didn’t help in any way with her grief. She felt worse than before she saw the psychiatrist. This supposedly well-educated person told her that her son would feel very upset and embarrassed that she couldn’t “get over” his death. There are those unforgiving words again. She was also informed that she should “pull herself together” and get on with her life. All kinds of hurting advice that in their twisted minds should make you feel better, but make you feel so much worse because you feel guilty for crying and feeling as if life has come to an end.
Now for the drugs they prescribe to heal your grief. This is what makes me think they see grief as a mental illness. Antidepressants are all good and well if you are suffering from deep depression, but it doesn’t heal heartbreak. Why do they prescribe antipsychotic drugs? As if grief is a psychosis and you are insane for having that unbearable pain. Most of them also prescribe mood stabilisers, as if you are just in a bad mood because you lost your child. My goodness, what do these people think? You are not in a bad mood for crying out loud; you have lost a child, and you are in hell because of it.
The worst thing I have come across is Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), also known as electroshock therapy. A medical procedure used to treat severe mental health conditions, involving a brief electrical stimulation of the brain while the patient is under anesthesia to induce a controlled seizure, potentially improving symptoms of conditions like depression or bipolar disorder. I can’t even begin to hide my disgust with this outdated and uncivilized treatment. A mother I met on this journey had this done to her when her doctor decided the drugs weren’t working as they should. It did nothing to heal her pain, it only caused short-term memory loss.
Why they don’t know about The Compassionate Friends and other groups for grief is beyond me. Don’t they ever do any research into things like this? Most of them never suggest you go and see a grief counsellor or trauma therapist, they just want to sort you out with drugs. It is the only solution for them. Take these pills and you will feel better, if only it were as easy as that.
The Methodist Church in South Africa has a wonderful course called Grief Share, where they work with you through your grief step by step. This not only gives you support but teaches you to understand all the stages of your grief and your reaction to your loss. It will be great when medical practitioners and other people in medical professions realise that grief is not a mental illness that needs drugs to make you feel better but a normal situation when you lose a loved one.
If I had the time and the money, I would print flyers to distribute at doctor’s consulting rooms to inform grieving people what to do about it. The lord knows they have no clue about grief.
Namaste
Completely agree. An ex employer's last words to me were "you're sick." A man has called me delusional, irrational, confused, mental....That lost goes on. It is abuse. Men, doctors, our family, friends we once had...they all need to stop. We grieve and grieve fall down and fall apart because o the children are dead and we go on living half dead.
Thank you for sharing this truth!!
I have mental illness anyway, so i take meds , but after my son died , my hospital notes say “adjustment disorder.” It really cut me . People said they just write that when they’re still in the process of figuring out what diagnosis you have / how to help you. But why do they even need to do that? I don’t have a disorder. I’m not having a hard time adjusting as If it’s something like I lost my bracelet and I’m having some extreme reaction over it. I lost my children, my whole universe , heart and soul . There’s no appropriate reaction to that!
Thank you for this important read .