Easing Their Burden Is Our Responsibility as Well

In the early psychiatric literature, the family of the patient was often looked upon as a source of his mental illness as a reservoir of abnormal genes which produced the illness or as a group of individuals who paved the way for the illness through improper toilet training, faulty communication patterns or by being refrigerator-like emotionally. In spite of the fact that these theories were based on inadequate and at times even non-existent data, the mental health professionals publicized them widely and the layman implicitly believed them. This only added a sense of guilt to the parents and other family members of the mentally ill who were already feeling depressed and hopeless as result of the patient's illness.