Loyalty and mental health

Love is critical to help us keep faith with life and rescue us from severe mental illness.

In fact, anyone who has ever suffered from mental illness and recovers will do so because of love, whether from a friend, a partner, a child, or a parent.

When mentally ill, we may want to return again and again to the subject that should normally have been dealt with.

However, the loving response is to take the worry as seriously as possible and address it head-on without scoffing or denying the scale of the concern.

Patronising pity can make the attention of others oppressive.

Loving companions do not judge us as beneath them. They don't oppress us by clinging to their belief in their own solidity and competence. Our companions indicate that they too might one day be in our place and ...

The mentally ill person is continually worried about ongoing and limitless torment. What if someone wants to take them away? What if the voices in their head never go away?

The loving companion does their best to quieten the panic. They present the future as unkno...

When we are sick in our minds, we have this punishing sense of how terrible we are, even if we often can't point to a specific crime. We are appalled by, and unforgiving of, who we are.

In this situation, a loving companion can make all the difference. They don't try to pe...