Keeping Mental Illness A Secret In Shidduchim🤕 🤒🤐👰🤵

Joseph:

You asked: “Is marrying someone who has a mental health issues something to be avoided, if possible?”

No one said that, though this does seem to be the overwhelming belief. The point here is whether one would be correct to keep this a secret until after. No one said that someone that has mental illness should never marry. It is an issue, and in deciding whether a shidduch is right for your child, you should have the information relevant to the decision. To be compelled to decide without all the facts is simply unfair.

Joseph – all my kids are married. Second child? No idea what you are talking about (as usual.) But you asked a question & got an honest answer, so what are you arguing about?

In the case of many mental health disorders they can not be diagnosed in children. If the warning signs are there but ignored the person who did not warn did the wrong thing. Everything in the world after the fact is bashert. But doesn’t mean the actions were right. It doesn’t mean that it’s ok to do avoda Zara after the fact. And doesn’t mean you should stay married to a narcissist abuser bc he was diagnosed after you were married so it’s bashert.

I’m glad that R. Hoffman is an avid reader of the CR. (No, I will not ask what his screen name here is.) I also appreciate he raised my point of undiagnosed illness in his article based on this thread (although he didn’t seek to answer that angle.)

Nothing should be kept secret in shidduchim.

I heard a story of a guy who after a year of marriage found out his wife was for years taking daily pills for a heart condition.

His immediate reaction was: “Honey, I don’t think you should be working with that condition. The work might be too hard on your heart.”

Is being a maniac taboo?

What about someone who went to therapy and finished it fully and does he have to disclose that ?

The Little I Know:

You obviously do not know a lot. Bipolar Disorder is untreatable. It can be controlled by medication. As far as Borderline personality goes. A person can be treated and cured. It takes 7 years of DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) and intense work to be officially cured. Medication helps stabilize the moods so it is “easier” to focus on implementing the skills into daily life. The therapy teaches you how to have healthy relationships, survival techniques and being mindful of your surroundings. It is true it is extremely difficult to live with someone if they are not taking their meds or going for therapy. It is still hard to live with somwone is in the middle of therapy as there is lots of trial and error stabilizing them on the medication. As well as he/she learning the ropes and rewiring the brain to communicate properly and build a life worth living.

Fme377, if you start off with “You obviously do not know a lot”, that doesn’t establish your credibility as someone knowledgeable in this area.

You obviously do not know a lot. Bipolar Disorder is untreatable. It can be controlled by medication.

speaking of not knowing….controlling with medication is a treatment.
There are many, many, many people with bipolar disorder who are very stable and are living very productive lives with their manic and depressive episodes far in their past.
If that is true of those with BPD, I have not yet heard of it.

Syag lchachmah
I never said the person cant be stable but essentially never officially cured. They always have to be on medication. When i was given my diagnosis from a very prominent psychiatrist, he said that at least i have bpd and not bipolar disorder because bpd can be cured.

untreatable does not mean it can’t be cured, it means there is no treatment. Bipolar Disorder has various treatments that can leave a person stable for years on end. If that is the case for someone, it does not matter that they are on meds, it matters that their behavior is predictable and that their condition is stabilized and they can be trusted to be a reliable spouse or parent. If you have found a successful treatment for BPD that does not involve meds then I wish you tremendous hatzlocha but please remember that it isn’t whether or not you are on meds that is important, it is your ability to function predictably and productively in society as a Torah Jew.

The little i know:
I am only telling that which my psychiatrist and therapist have told me. As far as medication, many of those with bpd have other mental illnesses as well. Eg. Anxiety,depression. We take mood stabilizers just like those with bipolar because we do have mood swings as well. The medication takes off the edge so we can use the rest of our reserves to implement the therapy in our lives.
There has to be real motivation to change yourself. But its possible. Ive come very far in the past 5 years.
As far as living with me, it can be extremely difficult. I am not disagreeing on that one. But speak to my husabnd on that one😃

I did not read through all these comments, but i’m gathering some misconceptions and confusion regarding Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder being treated. Mental illness is (usually) NOT something that’s cured and goes away. Even with therapy, one has to constantly fight the battle. However, they are BOTH – Bipolar and Borderline manageable with therapy and medication. Mental illness is not a life sentence. And, yes, ones with those disorders (and others) CAN and do get married. They can lead very “normal” and fulfilling lives. DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) is most common for Borderline Personality Disorder. Alternatively, CBT (Cognitive Behavirol Therapy) is used to treat a wide range of conditions such as Anxiety, OCD and more. The bottom line is that with Hashem’s help and proper Hishtadlus – therapy and meds (if needed), such diagnosis are very much treatable. That’s not to say it’s easy. It’s brutally had, but it can be done. Hope this clarifies.

Wow. I am amazed at this discussion about mental health and the complete acceptance by so many commenters of the conventional/mainstream approach to various “mental disorders”. It should be noted that there is an alternate school of thought on this issue that looks to treat various mental disorders such as Bipolar and Schizophrenia with healthy lifestyle changes including, healthy sleep,good nutrition, exercise, and nutritional supplementation such as Vitamin D3 and, High Dose Vitamin C. Dr Kelly Brogan MD has written a book and treats people with the goal of getting them off meds. She makes the case that the meds usually prolong the illness which although bad for the patient, is good for the pharmaceutical companies and the medical industry that makes money off of sick people. Unfortunately from the posts I see here it looks like everybody including Rabbonim have bought into the pharmaceutical advertising which incessantly,and insidiously, tries to convince us to ask our doctors about this drug or that drug. This medicalization of behavior is very disturbing. We should be asking why does there seem to be such a dramatic increase in mental illness? Is it really just less stigmatized and we are all just more “aware”. Based on the anecdotal stories I hear, somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3ds of our frum community is taking some kind of psychotropic at any given time. This would be inline with the numbers for the rest of the population in our country. If we were to stop doing shidduchim because of this than we have a bigger problem on our hands than non disclosure. It seems clear there is an environmental cause to this problem and blaming it on genes/heredity, is a cheap and dishonest way out of actually addressing the problem. Unless you are talking about a pure genetic defect like Tay Sachs or the like, most genetic predispositions still require environmental triggers such as the Brca cancer gene. Although having that gene dramatically raises the statistical risk of developing cancer, still it only raises it by at most 80%. there are clearly environmental and lifestyle factors that are a major part of the problem.

East12th- I don’t know anything about treatment of psychologica l diseases with conventional medication vs non-conventional, but since you have cancer as an example, I want to refute that.
You said :”there are clearly environmental and lifestyle factors that are a major part of the problem.”
Of course. Yet one cancer develops, it needs to be treated- with the best that medicine has to offer today, which can often be successful, although unfortunately not always. At this point making changes in lifestyle and nutrition will not cure the cancer, although it may strengthen the person and make the chemo more tolerable. Stopping smoking will not cure lung cancer, avoiding sun exposure will not cure skin cancer, even though undeniably, smoking and sun exposure are strong factors in disease development.

By the way, aren’t the vitamin and supplement makers also in it for the money? Don’t they also use strong marketing techniques to convince people to buy their product? Aren’t they also making money off of sick people?

As a Daughter of a father with mental illness.
I do want to say I always felt bad for my mother that she doesn’t have a normal marriage.my aunts did once disclose to me between the lines….that my father’s parent’s asked a certain rebbe and he said it was okay to disclose the illness…I sometimes wonder where is this reebbe now when my mother is struggling. And we kids didn’t have it ez too at times. But bh we grew up healthy kids…I always think must be someone’s teffillios. Were all at the point of getting married and were bh having nice families of our own. “The one to pity is my mom” (I sometimes look at her like a living almana)
(needless to say my father couldn’t keep a job down…and my mother needed to take over and is running a very busy shop…. with my father’s family being pretty well to do….I don’t remember last when they offered any help) at least that if your marring off such a good…make things easier.

You are repeating the propaganda of the Pharmaceutical Medical establishment. There is a huge amount of published peer reviewed evidence of the benefits of treating not only mental illness with supplements and life style changes but many other disease conditions as well. As far as quality of product, one can purchase from reputable companies and even from companies that have third party labs doing quality control testing similar to a kashrus organization that gives hashgacha. Aerobic exercise alone, has been shown to be equal or better than Prozac in treating mild to moderate depression. Imagine if you combine aerobic exercise with vitamin D3 supplementation and omega fatty acid uptake via eating foods like salmon and sardines. We know that a lot of Americans are vitamin D deficient and we know that there is probably more vitamin D deficiency in the frum community due to the way we dress and the fact that we do not spend time on the beaches in the summer. Researchers are now experimenting with things like steroids to treat depression now that we know there is in inflammatory element to this illness. However Vitamin C in high doses and in highly bioavailable forms is an anti inflammatory agent that you can take without the side effects of steroids. Unfortunately you will not hear advertisements for these types of treatment in the media or be recommended them by the average physician. As far as Cancer, it is best to try and prevent it before it hits than to try and “beat” it with Chemo after the fact. Diet and lifestyle is the number one cause of cancer and the number one way in which it can be prevented. Also please note the recent news story of a woman who after years of failed chemo to treat multiple myeloma, cured herself with curcumin supplementation.

Regarding the curcumin case- I took a look at the case study (Zaidi et al, BMJ Case Reports 2017;). Indeed, her disease seems to be controlled by the curcumin, when standard chemotherapy did not work. Yet, if you read the discussion of the case study- they say that this is the only known case of myeloma being cured by curcumin. In the one phase I/II clinical trial conducted with multiple myeloma patients, no positive results were seen. The authors of the paper say more research is needed. Indeed, there are many clinical trials testing curcumin’s effectiveness as an anti-cancer agent, due to very promising results in preclinical research- ie cell culture and mouse cancer models. It remains to be seen whether it will prove effective in large scale clinical trials, The fact that it helped one mm patient means nothing if it doesn’t help another 99. That’s why clinical research is important. Also, curcumin has poor bioavailability (meaning it doesn’t get to where it needs to get very well), so researchers are developing and studying its derivatives are being studied. It can also have negative interactions with other drugs, so it’s not necessarily safe to take the supplement.

However, if the current studies do show good results, and a curcuminn derivative gets FDA approval and is marketed as an anti-cancer drug, the anti-conventional medicine people will shun it as a product of the “propaganda filled pharmaceutical industry-medical professional-FDA establishment.”

Because that is the way to know if it will work or not. Otherwise, current sufferers will be running after “cures” that probably won’t help them. Most drugs do not pass the clinical trials, which implies that most of what is out there touted as the miracle cure is really not, and people would be wasting their time, money and ultimately life, on false leads. And since nothing would be organized, no one would have any clue what really does work and other people won’t be helped by the real cures. The studies don’t only study whether it works, but also set the best dosages, drug combinations, and of course, safety.
Of course, these people can join the “additional studies” and benefit from the experimental treatment before it is approved (as long as they are not assigned to the control group, an unfortunate but very necessary part of the study).

Joseph:

There is an obscure Ramban that discusses the subject of medical care by a professional. He essentially states that there is a science that utilizes empirical study that must be the training of anyone practicing in the field. No, he doesn’t endorse a particular medical school. But he states clearly that those who lack this scientific training should not engage in the practice. The context of this is a discussion about the mishna that exempts a physician from liability if a patient was injured or harmed in the process of healing. The message is that “The surgery was successful, but the patient died” is adequate to free the doctor of liability. But this is limited to the physician who is trained and expert. The charlatan or untrained doctor (lacking the empirical background) is liable for any harm.

I have personally witnessed adverse reactions to vitamins and supplements recommended by “experts” in that field. B”H none were life threatening. I have also observed some of the advocates of this approach bombard family members of someone with the dreaded illness, looking to stop chemotherapy and traditional medical care for IV drips of various vitamins. The fight was between these advocates and oncologists with years of experience. It was sad to watch patients die because their families withheld responsible treatment.

There is a place for nutrition management, supplementation, etc. The federal government requires labeling that specifies that these products cannot be used to diagnose or treat any medical ailment (check the labels for exact wording). The advocates would override that. Results are typically tragic.

I have just seem this interesting thread. There are many different problems that can be and are often described as mental health issues or more unkindly mental illnesses. Even if someone suffers from mental health issues and challenges why does he or she have to be so negatively described as suffering from mental illness. Is anorexia a mental illness? Many suffered from this cruel debilitating condition come out of several months inpatient psychiatric treatment with a clear understanding of where they have erred in the past. Are girls [and even sometimes boys] who have experienced the pain of anorexia to also be condemned to a life of pain without a spouse?

Yitzy, do those who take placebos qualify?