"Mental disorders are common in the United States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. When applied to the 2004 U.S. Census residential population estimate for ages 18 and older, this figure translates to 57.7 million people. Even though
mental disorders are widespread in the population, the main burden of illness is concentrated in a much smaller proportion — about 6 percent, or 1 in 17 — who suffer from a serious mental illness. In addition, mental disorders are the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and Canada for ages 15-44. Many people suffer from more than one mental disorder at a given time. Nearly half (45 percent) of those with any mental disorder meet criteria for 2 or more
disorders, with severity strongly related to comorbidity."
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/healthinformation/statisticsmenu.cfm
This is a excerpt from the National Institute for Mental Health's official website. It is an amazing statistic. Are we that flawed mentally? Perhaps the current state of our mental ability has not "evolved" to handle the constant access to basic survival needs. If you accept that evolution is a creditable model for the development of our species, then you'll know that the human consciousness is just an extension of our organism that has evolved throughout many years.
Awareness is found in all living things to some extent. For example: plants grow towards sunlight, roots grow deep to find water, the Venus fly-trap detects when an insect is within its grasp, and then reacts by quickly entrapping it. From the most basic, to the most complex, an organisms awareness and ability to react is essential to it survival.
Consciousness is when an organism has developed an intelligent awareness of its surroundings. The human consciousness is certainly the most advance example of awareness in any organism on earth. Its ability to avoid danger, manipulate its surroundings, provide food & sustenance are unmatched, yet still, it is only an extension of the organism. It is a tool employed by the organism to serve itself. You are a tool of your organism, or in other words your body is not meant to serve you, you are meant to serve it. That is your purpose, to find sustenance, avoid danger, reproduce and to learn from your environment to better serve your body. If you accept evolution, you must accept that.
So what does this have to do with mental health?
Within the past couple hundred years, many of our societies have went from hunters and gatherers to consumers that hunt for deals on jewelry and gather fast food value meals. This puts our precious consciousness completely out of its element. Our brain was wired in a time when meals had to be hunted, and not always found. When meals where planted and did not always grow. You might say its just a basic instinct to find food, and your right. If the human consciousness was a car, our instincts would be seated behind the wheel. The instinct to find sustenance, to feed ourselves, family or tribe was the primary drive behind our consciousness, and survival required constant effort. For many thousands of years this was one the main purposes of human consciousness.
Maybe you Fancy yourself a little bit more intelligent that someone from the Mesolithic era. (Roughly 20,000 years ago.) I assure you; if Mesolithic man were given the same resources as you in their education and childhood development, there would be little different. The technological world that you live in is just a house of cards stacked upon the backs of a few thousand innovators and inventors. Our ability to communicate and share our knowledge has allowed each generation to add to the long chain of knowledge while the common man reaps the benefits. Actually the metaphor of a chain is very realistic view of our everyday knowledge. The beginning of the chain is composed of innovators and inventors, link after link, each hanging on to their predecessors for many miles. Then at the bottom, in one unoriginal lump, dangles you and I with the rest of mankind.
Now take that Mesolithic mind that is hard wired to search for food and expend every one of its resources for survival and sustenance, then place it in the technological wonder that we live in. The technological age is only a recent addition to the chain of knowledge, thus lowering the rest of man into a totally foreign environment. The purpose of our consciousness not yet evolved to serve this change. Surrounded with the constant access to food and sustenance our minds malfunction and overindulge. Our instinct to expend all our effort on survival has changed, the previous "wiring" does not compute with our modern surroundings. The drive to eat manifests easily into an eating disorder, which i feel is the result of our human nature, in an environment that does not need such a drive to find food. Imaging Mesolithic man, suddenly surrounded by fast food and supermarkets, shelter easily obtainable, clothes available for purchase everywhere, shoes! Surely he would over-indulge.
Our consciousness no longer needs to devote all its resources into providing for its organism. Now the human consciousness has an overabundance of free time to think about whatever it wants to. Our minds dwell on foreign ideas, like happiness, expending all its energy and resources into caring about what other people think about its appearance. For a brain that is hard wired for survival, in an environment were survival is not a concern, neurotic behavior is common. When a organism is placed in an environment that is not in accordance with its instincts, the consciousness malfunctions. Similar behavior is found in hunting dogs, if they are denied the opportunity to fulfil their instinctive function, they become neurotic. A type of parrot called a macaw, is dependant on interaction and intellectual stimulation, if deprived it will develop a neurosis.
So here we are, millions of Americans, many of us never have to worry about when the next meal is coming, or how we will survive the winter. We are left to our own device, the extension of our organism called the consciousness. Recently freed from the bonds of survival, we become manic depressive, obsessive-compulsive, bi-polar and bulimic train wrecks.
mental disorders are widespread in the population, the main burden of illness is concentrated in a much smaller proportion — about 6 percent, or 1 in 17 — who suffer from a serious mental illness. In addition, mental disorders are the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and Canada for ages 15-44. Many people suffer from more than one mental disorder at a given time. Nearly half (45 percent) of those with any mental disorder meet criteria for 2 or more
disorders, with severity strongly related to comorbidity."
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/healthinformation/statisticsmenu.cfm
This is a excerpt from the National Institute for Mental Health's official website. It is an amazing statistic. Are we that flawed mentally? Perhaps the current state of our mental ability has not "evolved" to handle the constant access to basic survival needs. If you accept that evolution is a creditable model for the development of our species, then you'll know that the human consciousness is just an extension of our organism that has evolved throughout many years.
Awareness is found in all living things to some extent. For example: plants grow towards sunlight, roots grow deep to find water, the Venus fly-trap detects when an insect is within its grasp, and then reacts by quickly entrapping it. From the most basic, to the most complex, an organisms awareness and ability to react is essential to it survival.
Consciousness is when an organism has developed an intelligent awareness of its surroundings. The human consciousness is certainly the most advance example of awareness in any organism on earth. Its ability to avoid danger, manipulate its surroundings, provide food & sustenance are unmatched, yet still, it is only an extension of the organism. It is a tool employed by the organism to serve itself. You are a tool of your organism, or in other words your body is not meant to serve you, you are meant to serve it. That is your purpose, to find sustenance, avoid danger, reproduce and to learn from your environment to better serve your body. If you accept evolution, you must accept that.
So what does this have to do with mental health?
Within the past couple hundred years, many of our societies have went from hunters and gatherers to consumers that hunt for deals on jewelry and gather fast food value meals. This puts our precious consciousness completely out of its element. Our brain was wired in a time when meals had to be hunted, and not always found. When meals where planted and did not always grow. You might say its just a basic instinct to find food, and your right. If the human consciousness was a car, our instincts would be seated behind the wheel. The instinct to find sustenance, to feed ourselves, family or tribe was the primary drive behind our consciousness, and survival required constant effort. For many thousands of years this was one the main purposes of human consciousness.
Maybe you Fancy yourself a little bit more intelligent that someone from the Mesolithic era. (Roughly 20,000 years ago.) I assure you; if Mesolithic man were given the same resources as you in their education and childhood development, there would be little different. The technological world that you live in is just a house of cards stacked upon the backs of a few thousand innovators and inventors. Our ability to communicate and share our knowledge has allowed each generation to add to the long chain of knowledge while the common man reaps the benefits. Actually the metaphor of a chain is very realistic view of our everyday knowledge. The beginning of the chain is composed of innovators and inventors, link after link, each hanging on to their predecessors for many miles. Then at the bottom, in one unoriginal lump, dangles you and I with the rest of mankind.
Now take that Mesolithic mind that is hard wired to search for food and expend every one of its resources for survival and sustenance, then place it in the technological wonder that we live in. The technological age is only a recent addition to the chain of knowledge, thus lowering the rest of man into a totally foreign environment. The purpose of our consciousness not yet evolved to serve this change. Surrounded with the constant access to food and sustenance our minds malfunction and overindulge. Our instinct to expend all our effort on survival has changed, the previous "wiring" does not compute with our modern surroundings. The drive to eat manifests easily into an eating disorder, which i feel is the result of our human nature, in an environment that does not need such a drive to find food. Imaging Mesolithic man, suddenly surrounded by fast food and supermarkets, shelter easily obtainable, clothes available for purchase everywhere, shoes! Surely he would over-indulge.
Our consciousness no longer needs to devote all its resources into providing for its organism. Now the human consciousness has an overabundance of free time to think about whatever it wants to. Our minds dwell on foreign ideas, like happiness, expending all its energy and resources into caring about what other people think about its appearance. For a brain that is hard wired for survival, in an environment were survival is not a concern, neurotic behavior is common. When a organism is placed in an environment that is not in accordance with its instincts, the consciousness malfunctions. Similar behavior is found in hunting dogs, if they are denied the opportunity to fulfil their instinctive function, they become neurotic. A type of parrot called a macaw, is dependant on interaction and intellectual stimulation, if deprived it will develop a neurosis.
So here we are, millions of Americans, many of us never have to worry about when the next meal is coming, or how we will survive the winter. We are left to our own device, the extension of our organism called the consciousness. Recently freed from the bonds of survival, we become manic depressive, obsessive-compulsive, bi-polar and bulimic train wrecks.
