What's the Point?

Currently, no cure for mental illness exists, but mental illness is treatable and manageable. This means that once a mental illness shows up in a person's life, they'll likely be dealing with the symptoms of that mental illness for the rest of their life, even if they go to therapy, take their medications, and do everything they're supposed to do to manage it. This reality of mental illness can lead a lot of people to think, "If it's not even curable, and I'm going to continue to experience symptoms with treatment, then what's the point of getting treatment at all?"

I know, it's really hard to hear that an unpleasant condition is now going to be a thing that you have to make room for in your life instead of a thing that you can get rid of completely. I know it's discouraging to hear that you can do everything "right" and still experience symptoms that interfere with your life. I've been there, and I've felt all the emotions that go along with that realization. I will still tell you that treating and managing your mental illness is worth it, even though it won't be cured. 

Calling life with a mental illness, particularly an undiagnosed and/or untreated mental illness, unpleasant is an understatement. Life with an undiagnosed and/or untreated mental illness is a miserable existence for most of us, and the longer a mental illness goes untreated the worse it tends to get until we reach a point at which we're no longer actually living; we're just...here, drowning in an invisible ocean of misery and barely surviving hour by hour. 

So, what's the point of treating and managing your mental illness if it can't be cured? The point is simple: you deserve it. You deserve to live a life that is made up of more than drowning in the invisible ocean of misery that your mental illness has created. You deserve to live as fully, as healthily, and as happily as you possibly can alongside your mental illness. You deserve the healing that happens as you learn to manage your mental illness and live peacefully with it. You deserve the treatment to be able to get to that place. 

Yes, the mental illness and its unpleasant symptoms will still be there, but your relationship to it and the amount it affects your life will change over time with proper treatment. The treatment and the management techniques make the mental illness less difficult to carry so that you're aware of it but it's not a thing that you're drowning in ALL THE TIME anymore. Bad days will probably still happen, but with treatment and mental health management, the bad days can become more spaced out and a little easier to recover from when they do happen. Treating and learning to manage your mental illness makes life a little easier to live, even with the bad days. 

 

I'll end with this: The reality of mental illness is that it can't be cured. It can only be treated and managed, which means symptoms are going to come and go, even when someone does everything "right" to treat and manage the illness. This reality often leads people to wonder, "Well, what's the point of treatment if I'm just going to keep having symptoms anyway?" The point is that life with an untreated mental illness is miserable, and you deserve to live a life that is filled with more than the misery created by your mental illness. You deserve to heal and to live as fully, healthily, and happily as you can with your mental illness, and treatment and management can help you along that path.