Victim-blaming versus personal responsibility

In this article, we are exploring our responsibility for our actions and recovery when experiencing mental illness and similar problems. This is a controversial topic, as such discussions often degenerate to blaming victims for their experiences or invalidating their need for assistance. As is usual, the controversy is politically facilitated and does not reflect objective analysis. We first must establish a means of understanding mental illness via a combination of two perspectives: the individual, and the systemic.

The individual perspective argues that psychological problems are caused by factors of the person experiencing them, with the solutions addressing those factors. While practical and conducive to resilience, this perspective can disregard that problems often develop due to ongoing experiences with other people. Without scrutiny, this can lead to the conclusion that problems are the victims' faults, and that there is little justification in receiving help from others. This can happen due to the "just world error", an unconscious tendency to assume that the world is fair and hence events happen to people who deserve them. By comparison, the systemic perspective argues that problems are caused by the operation of society. Accordingly, what we consider "normal" human functioning is not objectively healthy, but the product of beliefs invented to ensure that authority and resources remain privileges of select groups. An individual may become mentally troubled when they can not meet these social expectations, or may not actually be ill but are labelled as such to stigmatise them and prevent their advance. Proponents of this perspective often advocate altering the structure of society as the solution. While stigma and mistreatment unfortunately do continue, this philosophy can facilitate "learned helplessness" when applied indiscriminately, in which there are choices available to us which can help, but which we do not realise because our minds have learned to only focus on the possibility of oppression and consider it inevitable, without regard for the possibility of success. As such, proper understanding of mental health requires applying these perspectives to different aspects of the problem. Herein lies the distinction between victim-blaming and personal responsibility.

Victim-blaming is arguing that we either feign or cause our own problems, and do not deserve assistance. By comparison, acknowledging personal responsibility is recognising what choices lead to positive outcomes. The equation of one with the other results because sufferers of mental illness are often also victims of maltreatment; the idea of taking responsibility for such problems can easily be misinterpreted as accepting blame for them when we have come to accept mistreatment as a norm. We may also develop self-blame; we unconsciously base our beliefs on the information most available in our minds, and from this may conclude that the problems are our fault. Furthermore, we have an unconscious tendency to avoid discomfort and change is usually uncomfortable psychologically, hence we may inadvertently try to maintain this comfort by rationalising that there is no purpose in trying to change as it would be futile, and that we should not hold this responsibility given that we are not to blame. However, if we focus only on the role of external factors in our problems because this has been emphasised to us, we are not fully exercising our own choices and skills in addressing them. The resulting state of inaction then makes the belief that our lives can not change a reality. Blame itself can not solve problems. Eliminating every environmental cause of mental ailments is impossible when the goal is helping a person in the course of their lifetime. If we rely on the environment changing, we will be left with the same problem and be demoralised when it does not. If we rely on developing our own resilience, the ailing will be salient in the short term, but we are more likely to achieve an outcome that is more desirable to us in the long term. This does not eliminate problems, as some hazards in the world can not be avoided, but with time, it develops our tolerance so that problems are less of an impediment and we strengthen our skills in solving them.

Another issue often over-simplified and sensationalised is the relationship between mental illness and undesirable behaviour. A common effect of mental illnesses is an impediment in information processing ("executive functioning"), on which we rely to complete even basic tasks; when under stress, we are less able to conduct this processing and make choices with the same flexibility as if we were in a sound state of mind. The unpleasantness of the overwhelm creates an urge to seek relief — and not responding to this can worsen the impediment. Seeking relief may involve withdrawing from the situation, or releasing emotions via, for example, verbal or physical aggression or crying — this is called "catharsis" and is often referred to as "losing control". In the time between starting to become emotionally aroused and enacting the behaviour in question, we often have some consciousness, however brief, of the situation, and although we may not be able to enact the preferred responses, we may still be able to choose the least harmful of what we can enact in the moment. In other situations however, especially in more severe cases of illness, we may genuinely not be able to discern what is appropriate. For example, post-traumatic conditions can cause us to perceive innocuous cues from others as threatening, in the same way that most people perceive actual threats. The mental processes such as those needed to discern danger from safety are often developed from life experiences; if these have been adverse, we may be prone to misinterpretations with absolutely no malice. Herein lies the complexity in determining how much control we have in those situations. In any case, blaming someone because they are psychologically incapable of tolerating certain stressors is both fallacious and inhumane. Simultaneously, the manner in which popular thought often makes broad rationalisations of, for example, criminal behaviour being caused by mental illness is detrimental for multiple reasons. As explained, we are often capable of making choices which are safer than others, even when in executive dysfunction; using mental illness alone to justify criminal behaviours means that people may not be held accountable for actions for which they justifiably should. Simultaneously, most of us are not a danger to others when suffering mental illness; when people believe these stereotypes, they are at risk of even inadvertently perpetuating stigma and discrimination against innocent people — which certainly happens.

A final domain in which personal responsibility is critical is the workings of psychotherapy. Therapy is unlike medicine; simply receiving therapy will not solve problems. Change is active, involving learning why we are experiencing the problem, and then developing strategies in which we work with the challenge so that it has less impact. It involves deliberate, regular action, doing what may not feel comfortable in order to confront the problem — for example, trying an activity even if we believe we will fail. Our minds appraise our actions in deciding how to think and feel. If we observe ourselves persisting with challenges and surviving, then we think more of ourselves and this mindset makes those challenges more tolerable. This is one of the key challenges in learning to live with mental illness: the symptoms make us want to avoid the challenge, but working with the challenge is eventually what is necessary to actually achieve a desirable outcome. This is why psychotherapy often utilises exposure and emotional regulation techniques to help clients to tolerate difficult situations in a safe manner.

As a counsellor with a history of mental illness, I wish for no feat greater than my job being made redundant by a benevolent world. But we do ourselves no favours by acting in accordance with this ideal and hoping that it will solve our problems. We should certainly take responsibility for social change to overcome the mistreatment of the vulnerable. Simultaneously, social change is unreliable as a form of personal healing, compared to personal change. Most of the clients whom I have helped over the years have desired to take personal responsibility for their healing, and certainly the ones that have thrived have taken this approach. They learned to acknowledge that the world is a dangerous place while not allowing that fact to prevent them from persevering — and in a world that may at times victimise us, this is a powerful means of refusing to be a victim.

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Thought of the month

Be cautious of those who claim to advocate "critical thinking" but are constantly accusatory and adversarial. "Critical thinking" means analysing information in a way that minimises the impact of biases, those qualities of thinking that are based on emotions and assumptions but do not reflect objective reality. These individuals most likely want to win the argument and dominate, not be truthful.