• BarrelAgedBoredom
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    29 days ago

    This isn’t a problem with “my” definition of cure. I’m using the commonly understood definition. If someone is successfully managing their type 1 diabetes with insulin and a healthy diet we don’t say they’re cured. They still have diabetes. If they stopped taking their meds and ate a ton of carb heavy foods they’d wind up in the hospital in a matter of days.

    Same goes with mental illness. If you stop taking your meds, going to therapy, etc. your mental state will decline again. They’re still mentally ill, they’re just managing it.

    Perhaps some people have acute moments of distress to the point where it’s clinically significant and treatment helps them weather that moment. Eventually they may return to their baseline of not needing drugs or therapy. But given the context of this thread (a woman killing herself after a decade of unsuccessful treatment) I figured it was fair to assume chronic mental illness. Something to the tune of major depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, etc.

    The word cure isn’t a fluid term to me or most people. It’s something that connotes permentant relief of a person’s signs and symptoms of a given illness. Something that often isn’t the case for mental illness