What About Mental Illness?

What About Mental Illness?

Mental illness. The words conjures up images of “back halls”, bad treatment and the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”.

Nurse Ratchet.

People walking about mindlessly while legally stoned on ineffective drugs.

The picture might not be pretty, but it is fairly accurate for 1950's Michigan. Unfortunately, the real picture is that this is the 1970's. This is the memory that I have whenever I would be visiting an Aunt of mine who was severely mental ill. I remember the gifts that my Aunt would make while in “OT” supervised by the “OT Lady” (for the uninitiated to the mental health system the “OT Lady” was the woman who was in charge of the “Occupational Therapy Dep't” of whatever psychiatric hospital that my Aunt was at). One never knew what one would receive from the hands of my Aunt. It might be some cigarette ashtrays one year, a candy dish the next.

One year the poor OT Lady taught my aunt how to knit and I found myself with a hand knitted sweater that fit badly with such a tight “Turtle neck” that most turtles would have rather die in than actually wear! Yup, those were the “weird years”...when no one knew what one was receiving during Christmas when my Mom would receive permission to take my Aunt (her sister) on a LOA (that is hospital jargon for “Leave of Absence” and different from AWOL, which stands for the same in the military as it does when one is in a mental hospital, oddly enough). Aunt would be picked up at the hospital in Kalamazoo, MI which my Dad totally detested because most of the streets go in one way direction only.

His thoughts on Kalamazoo was that they “should build walls around the damned place” (he never said who the “they” were...and I was too afraid of ask. Sigh. “The good old days”. They were neither. But they were days...more like daze (than days) to me! Oh well.

The bottom line is that the mentally ill are not responsible for what occurs when they are not well. That much people much agree on. How can you hold someone responsible for an action that happened when they were not well? The same is true for God. The same is true for the Spirit world.

The differences is that the spirit world can CURE and this world can't. The best that this world can do is to medicate, try to “treat” and pray for the best. That's it folks! That doesn't mean however, that we should go out and kill every mental patient in the US. That would leave a great deal of people unaccounted for! Most of our country, in fact! Besides, that little feller in Nazi Germany did that back in the 1930's to mid 40's! Since then, that has been high on the “not good things to do list”.

What it does mean is that we need to allow the spirit world to act when a person crosses over. Like we have any real say in what happens after one is dead any ways! When a mentally ill person crosses over, they are met by a special team of spirits who have been specially trained to assist the mentally ill. (Yes, there is training in heaven!) The mentally ill person is placed in a deep sleep, but are still aware of what is going on around them. They sleep until they are cured of their mental illness. No matter how long it takes! When they are cured, they awake and start their lives...but this time, they are cured of their mental illness. That is the good news part.

I don't know if there is a downside...

I don't want to know....