The term emotional & behavior services is used here in place of mental or behavioral health which continues to promote a false premise regarding the problems in living displayed by people with atypical behavior. Behavior services could be considered as those services provided to people whose problems in living stem predominately from their behavior; creating their inability to create mutually satisfying and gratifying relationships. In their relationships they display hostile, aggressive or antisocial behavior. The predominant emotion is anger. This differs from people who have emotional problems – i.e., problems that are predominantly indicated by their feeling anxious, fearful, sad or depressed. This is an arbitrary separation as both emotions and behavior are apparent in both groups; however, in the first group the anger [emotion] is less problematic than the behaviors that it generates. Since the anger generates potentially violent behaviors and since the internal logic of that anger is so little understood, our own fear of the individual become the predominant principle of services. Because of this fear we seek to control the threatening behavior. Whether we implement that control, as part of a judicial or medical auspices is somewhat irrelevant.
There is some level of fear created by the emotional side as well. The fear here, however, is indirect, as we fear that the person will be violent against himself or herself, either purposefully or accidentally. Because they are in our sphere of influence, we feel responsibility for such people we try to protect such people from themselves. Since it is easier, and more assured, to prevent suicide through coercion than persuasion, we often choose restraints similar to those used on people who may aggress. Of course, in both cases, we do this for the persons “own good” since they are unable to control themselves. The fact that such constraints on the person are likely to create resistance that inversely supports the need for such constraint is often ignored. We can justify our behavior.
The various superstitions that support these traditional methods of “managing atypical behaviors” can be viewed historically and for purposes of understanding that history and the most recent superstition, I would suggest three readings, “The Myth of Mental Illness” [Szasz], “Social Competence” [Wise & Smye (Eds)], and/or “A Social History of Madness” [Porter] as sufficient to make the point.
A small minority of people in the helping services has opted for a different belief system – one that supposes that the person with problems in living has a distortion in their internal logic, not chemical or genes. This basic assumption was efficiently summarized by James Allen as “A man [person] is literally what [s/]he thinks, his character being the compete sum of all his thoughts.” If that statement is accepted and it seems inarguable, the next building block is to understand that what a man thinks, is largely what he has learned. How I feel about myself, other people and circumstance is learned through experience with major influence by my culture, my family and other significant people. These factors create the habits by which I function. Such habitual functioning can be both cognitive and behavioral, for we are animals of habit.
It is a basic tenet in all helping professions that the helper must create a trusting, significant relationship as the basis for offering help. From one perspective, then, the helper becomes influential in regard to what the person believes. If the helper suggests that the person cannot help themselves, that they need control from the outside, that they cannot survive without medical constraints – what is the likely result? Have we not influenced the individual to believe that they are incompetent and that the helper is competent? The whole notion represents the superstition of mental “illness”, and that notion is obviously destructive.
Prosocial skill building implies that people with problems in living can learn new ways of functioning! This cannot logically happen if there is a medical condition that controls that person’s behavior. But more importantly, the message of medication is almost as destructive as the medication itself. One cannot support making a statement to a person that they can and must take control of their own lives and learn the skills necessary for successful living, while at the same time telling them that they cannot control their own behavior and need medication in order to do so.