Pros and Cons of a Person With a Mental Illness as a US President - Essay Example

Pros and Cons of a Person With a Mental Illness as a US President Pros and Cons of a Person With a Mental Illness as a US President Mental illness is a thing hearing diagnosis of which may be a shocking and in some cases terrifying to hear. The attitude towards mental illnesses has changed from distant to supporting because it has become possible to treat these illnesses and teach the family members to live with the fact that one of them is subjected to a certain mental disorder. Mental illnesses are also a fact which demands special attention from all the members of the society: it has been reported that they affect disability in the developed nations most significantly even compared to the heart diseases and cancer.

(Grison et al., 2015, 457). It has become a significant point of concern whether the people with mental illnesses should be accepted in such sphere of activity as politics; it has even been questioned that such person should try him or herself as a President of the United States. On one hand, this is a trendy idea of equality among everybody and guaranteeing equal and overwhelming rights and freedoms for every person; on the other hand, there are obviously negative moments in this idea which state that this should not be, and the reasons for this suggestion practiced which will be explained below.

Some mental disorders have symptoms which may negatively affect not only the patient him or herself, but also the other people around which is classified as violation of one’s freedom and certain right in every individual case. These symptoms also would make it difficult for a President to take sound decisions which may negatively affect not only the lives of people, but even some world’s nations. Such mental illness as schizophrenia, for example, has symptoms which make the affected person’s thinking different from normal: delusions, that is, obsession with delusive ideas during which the patient does not accept any facts and relies only on his or her fixed ideas; hallucinations, that is, seeing the things or hearing voices which are not heard by the others; disorganization of behavior, that is, it is impossible to know what to expect from the patient and how he or she will react to the other people.

(Grison et al., 2015, 476). Delusions of the President would negatively affect his decisions making: the decision made in a condition of delusion would be characterized by nonsense, for example, to close all the universities or increase the taxes by 1000 times. Obviously, these ideas are not realistic, but the person with a mental illness would not react to such statements and would go on reckoning that only he or she is right. Hallucinations are also negative things for the person acting as a US President: for example, some decision may be taken properly, but it may turn out to be that the patient with a mental disorder has taken advice from a phantom, not from a real person, and revealing this fact would create concern among the public.

Disorganized behavior is also a symptom which makes a person unpredictable: for example, today the President feels excited and makes good presents and treats the people around good, but tomorrow he or she may become very aggressive and apply the behavior model which is not proper for a country leader. Taking the above said into consideration, it is possible to state that there are more cons than pros in the possibility of a mentally ill person becoming the US President, and they all concern the way the other people may be affected by a person subjected to a certain mental illness.

References Grison, S., Heatherton, T., Gazzaniga, M. (2015). Psychology in Your Life. New York, London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1-533.