Understanding Mental Illness Through Carrot Allergies

I had a gym teacher in high school who claimed to never let an ounce of unnatural medicine pass his lips. He did this by seemingly never getting sick as well as an alarming regimen of "green smoothies".
More than once he expressed his frustration with the young generation of people who had developed numerous bizarre allergies and illnesses because they apparently never cleared their dinner plates of vegetables growing up.

So yes, I was one of those kids who made bargains with their parents over how much broccoli I had to eat in order to get a cookie for dessert but I will defiantly state over and over again that that had nothing to do with the development of my carrot allergies. This is mainly due to the fact that raw carrots were my all time favorite snack growing up. I actually continued eating them after we diagnosed the allergy until the allergic reactions got so bad that I could no longer even hold a carrot without swelling up like a pudgy balloon.

I'm coming around to my real point in a rather leisurely manner, I know but my personal anecdote about gym teachers and carrots seemed like the best way possible to address my (limited) knowledge of the history of mental illness.

In victorian England, men didn't know how to deal with the idea of women being sexually repressed so they called it hysteria. In 1950's America, the idea that people could be depressed was so crazy that they needed to be locked up. When people don't understand something, historically, they either rename it or shove the problem under the rug.

I find it hard to believe that people actually believe that some illnesses aren't historically relevant. I don't think a Gen-Y kid woke up one morning and said to his mom, "hey, you know, I think something weird is going on. I just can't stop touching this light switch over and over again".

Until tonight I had no idea that my Great Uncle had had OCD. My family just called him eccentric. Until tonight I had no idea that his daughter had the same OCD as well. We had also called her eccentric. I feel so guilty that I judged this poor woman for what she cannot control. It saddens me so to think that she's not getting the treatment she so clearly needs because she finds it shameful to seek it out.  So what if Generation Y is so illness and allergy ridden we clear out pharmacies looking for solutions? We have realized something infinitely more valuable while doing so: it is okay to ask for help.