I used to take the bus, then the subway, then the bus home from work. It would take about 75 minutes each way. Now I work from home.
On the bus, in those good old days, there used to be signs detailing the symptoms of lupus. Now, I have a friend who suffers significantly from lupus, and I am not belittling the actual illness, but the symptom list started with fatigue, and I remember a number of days, sitting on the bus, bleary-eyed, wondering if I might possibly have lupus.
Last spring we went to Italy and one of our guide books acquainted us with Stendhal Syndrome. Basically, you can overdose on fine art as much as you can on fine wine and then, you go a bit loco. So, the entire time - the entire time! - we spent at the Accademia and the Uffizi galleries, I was monitoring my mental health.
Now today, I read this.
Here's what I want to know: is it even helpful in the least to publicize these conditions? Is it really?
I teach social sciences and we go over the symptoms for many mental illnesses. Of course every year I get kids who think they have something, and I reassure them that they're likely perfectly normal. Until one actually had a mental illness, that he first noticed was a problem sitting there in my class. I reassured him, but suggested a doctor just in case. So sometimes they help. But the rest of us hypochondriacs just have to suffer with rotating symptoms.
ReplyDelete