Bureaucratic thinking and mental illness

Do you know that bureaucratic thinking is distorting our perceptions and thus becoming a significant contributor to mental illness in society?

When people have a mental illness, the medical profession classifies them into boxes and various categories based on their behavior and symptoms. It does not necessarily mean that doctors understand what is going on inside a person’s mind. They will advise and counsel to the best of their ability based on their personal experience and knowledge, and then the problem will be accepted by the patient. But if the patient has no knowledge of her mind, then no doctor can help that individual except to give him drug therapy. So when we’re treating a person with a mental illness, what we’re trying to do is help the person change their perceptions of them with psychotherapy and/or drug therapy.

In my mind, I see mental illness only as a disorder of perception. It is the degree that determines the level at which it becomes a clinical disorder of behavior and action. Therefore, a clinician must first clarify her perceptions before she can offer any mental health advice to a patient. If the physician’s perceptions are the same as the patient’s, then how can you help that individual? Therefore, gaining self-knowledge and learning to understand the thought process is of the utmost importance for any health professional. We have to learn to turn a negative perception into a positive one.

What I have discovered in my mind is that there is no such thing as a broken heart or a traumatic experience that lasts forever. All experiences in life are meant to make you a better and wise person by teaching you a life lesson. Therefore, all experiences in life, good or bad, are eventually good for you. That is my perception and observation. So if a patient comes to me for help, what I will try to do is help them change their perceptions of them and help them accept the experience. Of course, if the patient has no desire to change or help himself, obviously my help will be minimal.

Simply labeling a person as suffering from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, PTSD, etc. it does not change your perceptions. All it does is give you a justification for continuing in your present state of mind. For example, you might say, “The doctors finally found something wrong with me. Now I have ADHD.”

In my opinion, bureaucratic thinking, which is the mainstay of governments and institutions around the world, is a major contributing factor to people’s poor mental health today. It’s turning us all into zombies. Bureaucratic thinking is simplistic thinking applied to control and regulate people.

Please let me give you some examples. Some time ago, in a small country town, I was approaching a T-junction from a side street in my car. There was a stop sign. Since there was no traffic on the road, I slowed the car down and got in. A traffic policeman waiting on the other side of the road called me and stopped me. He asked, “Did you see the stop sign?” I said yes. “I had broken the law. Stop means stop, and he booked me for the infraction.

Can you see here how only the letter of the law was applied? Common sense was not used and traffic conditions on the road were not taken into account. No deep thought, moral or ethical focus was on the police officer’s mind. There can be no arguing with what he did. He was just doing his job.

Let’s look at the law that prevents parents, teachers, and police officers from disciplining children. Here again, they literally follow the letter of the law. No corporal punishment may be given. However, when children are out of control, one can use any force necessary to contain them. Is there any use of common sense in this? Violence is not allowed in one case, but it is okay to use force in the next. This type of contradiction is bad for mental health. It creates confusion in the mind and sends wrong messages to both children and adults.

From the above, you should see that bureaucratic thinking has great limitations. There is no regard for ethics, common sense or reason. It is simply a plain and simple application of the letter of the law. One can see that it affects our mental health and behavior. It makes us feel intellectually handicapped. So you must think that the medical profession would be the first to fight against this kind of thinking. Right?

Wrong. These professionals who should help us clarify our perceptions themselves suffer from a perception disorder. They themselves have become bureaucrats who are trying to mislead the public into thinking that we are practicing a high level of medicine by having a bureaucratic QI and CPD (Quality Improvement and Continuing Professional Development) system. Nothing can be further from the truth.

In this system, a doctor receives points to participate in certain educational activities. You are required to achieve a minimum number of points in three years, after which you are awarded a certificate of completion. This certificate qualifies you for further registration with the medical board and implies that you have met the standard required of it. Does now mean that this doctor is currently practicing a high level of medicine? It would be very naive to think that way.

In my opinion, it is the individual physician’s ethical approach to his or her work that sets the standard in medicine. One can attend as many conferences and have as many certificates as one wants, but if one has no ethics and feelings towards one’s fellow man, one might as well say goodbye to standards.

It is time for the medical profession to stop falling into bureaucratic thinking and examine the role it should play in society. It should protect society from bureaucratic thinking, not become a part of it. If we become part of the problem, how can we solve it? There must be an ethical approach to raising standards in medicine. The application of coercive and intimidating measures is not the way forward. They are the same behavior modification techniques that were used when I was a child in school. The teacher will say “You will not be allowed to go home until you bring me a hundred lines. I must not speak in the classroom.”