Mental Health and Integrity

What do I know about mental health? I know I get tired of looking at the world about me, where I live, what others say, what others fail to admit, and the laughter of supposed foolishness. This is not what they impress upon me at mental health centers. There are dos’ and don’ts’ in every part of society in order to exist, in order to maintain even your physical health and welfare, and we have to find our place in respect to living righteously. Where? I sometimes want to give up on the rat race of being “real”; meaning respectful, caring, and most of all honest. Within I am quiet, and discerning, not verily an overtly smart man, yet I try to carry my weight. Where I live there is not so much that kind of respect for me to say amongst others that I was strong enough to put drugs and alcohol aside and stop pretending I was a man of the world. Maybe foolish yet not then a man to say my integrity was meaningful. That’s what I am seeing today, a lack of integrity; honesty, even in myself, yet as I write this, I begin to see how much more the weaker I have become than even my own neighbor, or what friends I thought I had. Integrity is honesty.
One definition I have read is that “Psychiatry is a treatment of souls”; it is a concept of the consistency of a person’s actions, their values, principles and outcomes. Integrity is a sense of honesty and truthfulness; it is not hypocrisy, the opposite of true beliefs. Integrity is the wholeness of qualities which make up an honest and good person.
Physics, in the realm of science and other principles, have integrity and values. There is consistency in knowledge and learning therefore integrity; honesty. In medicine there is a sacredness, and integrity which is its wholesomeness, which is linked to unity and again honesty. This is a part of behavior as well as the principles of virtue and logic and this works together to make a person of belief and of good quality.

I guess we all need to realize our potential for what is right, and begin to try to live not so much for immortality and wealth, but for the beauty that exist within our own souls, finding that experience which is elusive called perfection, and finding it honestly, with integrity. I feel challenged every day in what I want to believe, and I am often saddened when I ask myself what have I quit using drugs for, why have I stop drinking and living an immoral life style as a beggar, as a thief as a fool.

Honesty, a caring heart and the willingness to understand what you are and what you can become can prove that you are stronger than someone who may say you are not; “but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy”. A part of the treatment of souls and the flesh, and I have understood myself, my weakness.

Written by: Donald Sammons