Are You Willing To Love...

Shemsi en Tehuti · (#1 (**permalink**))

...someone with a mental illness?

Many African psychiatrists from Dr. Amos Wilson to Dr. Na'im Akbar and Dr. Frances Cress Welsing have noted the rise in mental illnesses in our community both in the States and in Britain after Integration. Other incidences with Integration into the larger Western society are homosexuality, suicide, and other self-negating behaviors. However, I want to focus simply on mental illness here, and how it effects our relationships with each other.

Men, could you love a woman who is not mentally well, where she seems to need psychoactive medication for depression, anxiety, or one of the other mental illnesses that are becoming far too popular/common these days?

Would you stay in such a relationship to help them back to good mental health, or avoid a woman like this all together?

I suppose this is open for the converse situation with women encountering mentally unstable men as well.

N.B. · (#2 (**permalink**))

I thought all men had some kind of mental illness! (only joking)

No; Im sorry but I dont think I could stay in a realtionship with someone with a mental illness; relationships can be complicated enough as it is.... However if my partner developed a mental illness after I had been with him for a long time; it would have to depend on the situation - eg whether there was any risk of violence; or whether his condition was manageable/treatable with medication; or counselling.
In my experience men tend to rely on women for emotional support more than women relying on men for the same. What do you think??