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It is human nature to try to find equilibrium, a state of “normalcy,” and an enduring level of self and sensation in almost every condition.
Change of season, change in the climate, change in location, change in fortune—say, from well-off to straightened circumstances, or from relative freedom to captivity or slavery, or from a companionable relationship to sudden loneliness and grief—all will be experienced as a new shock, and then a familiar condition, and finally, despite any deprivations, as “the way things are.” This is personal self-leveling.
This tendency explains the “Stockholm syndrome” experienced by kidnap victims. It explains how people can adapt to the limitations imposed by stroke, amputation, or blindness. And it also explains a mode of thinking by those experiencing mental illness called anosognosia. This is the patient’s insistence, despite hallucinations, delusions, and psychotic outbursts, that “I am not sick. I do not need help. I don’t need medication.”
Most health impairments—a broken leg, a bout of flu—are acute and temporary. You want to get them fixed to get over them. But most mental illnesses—schizophrenia, bipolar, depression—are chronic and the mental states are long lasting. After the onset, the patient adjusts. This is life now, and the old way of thinking is forgotten.
Add to this chronic perspective the fact that most psychotropic medications have side effects. Aside from affecting your attention span, motivation, or reward system—as dopamine blockers do in the role of antipsychotics—they often have physical effects. Some cause muscle twitches and facial tics. Some make your mouth dry. Some cause weight gain. And after the medication has silenced the hallucinations and muted the delusions, the physical effects are still there and bothersome. So, the patient feels well again, dislikes the discomforts, and stops taking the medication. That is, the physical side effects are not absorbed into a “new normal” any more than the constant itch of a skin condition can be accepted as part of life.
