Overall, people with mental health conditions may have experienced a lot of trauma or physical brain injuries that could have led to their health conditions. I am concerned to know that there are individuals who had a traumatic brain injury and are barely able to function.
I have met people who had to learn to be able to walk and talk again and other people who are not able to achieve what Abraham Maslow calls "Self-Actualization." People with mental health conditions may get excluded from society and other people may tend to not understand them.
Some of us may have had trouble explaining in detail how to do something and the other person does it wrong. Other times, we may fail to understand what the other person meant when looking for something that the other person wants. In other words, sometimes people make mistakes and do not follow instructions with every single detail or the other person may not be very specific. This can happen with regular people, yet the experience might be different for the mental health community. For example, any person who has experience with some sort of Autism knows that a certain amount of instructions can be processed slowly and followed in chunks.
On the other hand, I have also met an individual who is playful in nature, yet he does not have self-autonomy. This individual has a very severe head injury that led to somewhat unclear verbal communication. Sometimes he could be understood and sometimes it is hard to understand his point. What struck me the most is the unconditional love and respect everyone provided for him. He would talk to staff, members, and volunteers. Most of his communication is playful and it gave me hope that everyone just loved having him around. He always had a favorite song to sing; from "who let the dogs out" to "I believe I can fly."
To be honest, I would talk to him. I did not care whether the conversation was logical or not. I did not worry about understanding everything he said, but I really enjoyed not having to worry about being right or having something meaningful to say. I played cards with him even though the game did not make sense and it was rigged so that he would always win.
Psychology in the terms of mental health is very challenging and I love exploring and learning from the special case of any individual.
