The mentally ill can experience the illness directly with a crushed spirit.
On the contrary, physical illness is experienced indirectly through the body organs (Heart attack-heart, Hepatitis-liver, etc) without a crushed spirit.
My conclusion is mental illness is more difficult to bear than physical illness.
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The brain is a physical organ of the body, ergo mental illness is a physical illness
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Well to put it shortly, between a terminal disease like cancer and mental illness I would pick second one because I’d like to live. Of course only if you get both then you can tell the true difference. Sorry if this sounds like a dark humour.
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The main difference, may be then, is hard to tell if I am mentally ill if compared with physical illness.
I have 2 herniated discs in my spine along with arthritis. This is very painful. Chronic pain is somewhat similar to my sz. There are pain meds, injections, a back brace, etc. that help the pain but nothing cures it. Just as my recovery from sz is made less painful by my attitude so is my physical pain affected the same way. They both suck but with the chronic pain you cannot fight it and in a way have to accept it. I don’t think one trumps the other in ease except maybe in the area of stigma. Although stigma does exist. My mom has Pulmonary Fibrosis which is progressive scarring of the lungs. It is terminal and the only cure is a lung transplant. She was a smoker but this did not cause it. She faces stigma in the way people judge her for having a lung disease because she smoked without even knowing she was ever a smoker. Stigma does exist for physical ailments as well. 
I used to think that the body could suffer twenty times as much as the mind until I got put on Haldol. There are forms of physical suffering that the mind can subdue and vice versa. There are forms of mental suffering that physical suffering can subdue. The best condition is no suffering at all.
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Pain is inevitable, Suffering is optional
-Buddha
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I think it would suck far worse to be paralyzed than to have mental illness. I also think suddenly being unable to move would be psychologically debilitating as well. Also imagine what losing your sight or hearing would be like or being “trapped inside your body” after a stroke. There are worse fates than schizophrenia my friend.
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Having both at the same time would really suck…
Here’s to old age
There is a difference between physical illness and physical disability. I think of mi as a form of disability. Between my sz and a physical disability, i would really need to experience a physical disability alone to tell u which is worse.
when my mother in law’s son’s step son (confusing huh?) was diagnosed with cancer, I was having severe problems with the voices and intrusive thoughts. my mother in law found out and said, “its not cancer you don’t know real suffering”
I’ve had chronic back pain in the past, and I’ve got this Sz. The back pain was much worse for me than my mental affliction. Although my psychotic episodes were harder on my family.
I suffer pretty seriously from paranoid schizophrenia. As in the symptoms come back every couple of days regardless of me taking my meds and that can be very demoralizing. The symptoms are basically torture for me so I’m always reminded that I have this illness, they are seriously frightening. And when I’m not suffering from the positive stuff I have some serious negative stuff. Some of the stuff people on this site do easily is extremely hard for me or nearly impossible. Some of my symptoms closely mimic the symptoms of injuries to the brain such as a stroke or cerebral hemorrhage. I have alogia which is similar to expressive aphasia, this basically makes it impossible for me to maintain a train of thought and participate in conversation.
Some people on this forum have Schizophrenia lite, basically the symptoms don’t seriously interfere with their ability to be a normal human. My symptoms make me very dysfunctional, I wouldn’t trade this for terminal cancer though, there really is no comparison. At least people with terminal cancer can speak for a number of years before they die.
Mental illness = being weird
Physical illness = something actually wrong
Correction…
Mental/Physical illness = something actually wrong
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“My conclusion is mental illness is more difficult to bear than physical illness.”
That’s just really naive and spoken like someone who has never experienced physical illness of their own or of a loved one.
The two shouldn’t be up for comparison.
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Comparing the two is pointless…
Pain is pain
You can wind up dead either way.
Physical illness can take you out
Mental illness can take you out.
It’s how you challenge it that’s going to determine what it is.
I have strong people in my family that dealt with both mental and physical illnesses and their strength carried them through till the end.
They never let their illnesses define them.
It’s all about mindset
I know from my own experience and the experiences of my elderly parents (now deceased) that the helplessness of old age (before things like incontinence, hearing impairment, digestive problems, debilitating weakness, inability to drive, repeated surgeries, alienation from today’s world) leads to mental suffering.
As @flameoftherhine says, comparing mental and physical illness is pointless. They are not on the same scale.
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I feel the IDEA of having a mental and physical illness is similar because we as schizophrenics are conditioned to handle the trauma of illness. So if I had a physical illness on top of mental, it wouldn’t be so bad because I’ve already had to face facts I have a permanent illness…so it’d be easier to handle getting cancer later in life because I’m sz, since I’ve already had to cope with the idea I have a lifelong illness.
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