Dr. David B. Adams

The presence of a mental disorder is not synonymous with being disabled. There are individuals with mental retardation, schizophrenia or severe brain disease/injury who are not totally disabled.

18-22% of adult Americans have symptoms and signs of at least one mental disorder and 10% have symptoms of a personality disorder. The question is "at what point does a mental disorder cross the line into a mental disability?"

The answer is deceptively simple. When a mental or emotional disorder creates an impairment in occupational and/or social functioning, we have moved into the realm of mental disability.

As with physical disorders, there are profound motivational influences on the concept of disability. An individual who wants to work, even with significant limitations, will seek to do so. An individual who does not wish to work will seek every opportunity to avoid doing so.

An example: I was in the checkout line of a store. The cashier recognized me. She lowered her voice and asked me if I would write a statement allowing her to claim mental disability.

I asked her if she believed that she was mentally disabled. She replied that she had been occasionally depressed during her life but that she was not depressed at the moment.

She went on to explain that she wanted to claim mental disability "because a friend of mine who is perfectly fine is getting disability, and she even has a law suit going."

I asked this cashier if she obtained anything from her job other than a salary. She responded that the "job is okay, but if I can stay home and get the same money, why would I want to work?"

I offered that "some people work because the feel a sense of productivity (she shook her head), and I suggested that some work because of the contribution they make to society (she giggled and stated that she doubted that). I noted that some even work because it fills the day, serves as a role model for family and friends and gave a sense of completion to life.

She indicated that I was clueless.

I explained to her that I would not help validate her claim for mental disability that I suspected that work for her may be the best available psychotherapy.

She told me that I was just plain mean. And at that very moment, I felt that we had at least agreed upon this one fact

I recently viewed an event in which a toddler who was not supervised by his father, ran from a store and then briefly caught his fingers in the closing door.

There was no tissue damage, but the child wailed. He wailed loudly.

The father of the screaming child then yelled at another patron who was entering the store at that moment as if it were the patron's fault simply because he was there.

I had watched this child sitting at a table with his father, thrashing about prior to the accident, attention-demanding, and chiefly ignored by his dad.

For sake of completeness, the father was German. The entering patron at whom he yelled was black. The latter turned, looked at the former and just opted to ignore a clearly absurd situation.

The store manager came forward to try to soothe the father and the boy. The father would not accept the verbal support, and, rather than remove the child from the environment, he allowed the child's cries to continue to escalate.

An employee came forward with ice which father and son also refused. The volume level of the child's screaming increased.

Another patron witnessing this, and having his wife and children with him, came to assist, offered the child ice cream and tried to console the father. He tried to reassure the father after looking at the boy's hand. Again, all was refused as the situation grew in magnitude.

I then saw the child's hand. It was red, neither bleeding nor (as yet) swollen.

Had the father removed his child from the store, he would have been providing what is called a "Type One Cure." When someone is traumatized in a setting, remove them from that setting and do little to remind them of the setting they have just left.

I am certain that I was not the only person there believing that the father was looking at legal/financial recourse for an event that was purely accidental and if anyone was responsible, it was the father's, for being inattentive, and the child's, for being disobedient.

We have a blameful society. When ill-fate befalls us, it is never just an accident. It is almost always "someone's fault, and they are going to pay."

For explicable, but not necessarily optimistic reasons, we have evolved into a society that has ceased to suck it up, tough it out and, instead, feel that we have recourse to the law...rather than responsibility for ourselves.