Accepting illness - Be honest

ONE of our less endearing characteristics is our instinct to embrace secrecy rather than openness.

The painful consequences, and the victims, of that self-serving deception are all around us.

This is especially so in regard to mental illness or the kind of intellectual decline that comes naturally with age. Today we report on musician Glen Campbell’s life-enhancing decision to publicly confront his Alzheimer’s.

This disease, like depression and many mental illnesses, is a normal if unenviable part of life and pretending that it does not exist does nothing to help the victim. That some of us still treat these illnesses as taboo subjects must prompt the obvious if unflattering question: By trying to keep such an illness secret who are we really trying to protect? Hardly the victim.