Mental illness simply put is just like any other illness.  Like any other organ system the brain may get sick too. In general not all illnesses are curable, but a lot are manageable; mental illness is no exception. It has curable types of illnesses and manageable types too.
          Regardless of which category an illness falls into there is in essence, treatment. A lot of people with mental illness as with other illnesses recover fully without any trace of having been ill before and without affectation of their ability to return fully to their life before the illness. A proportion will be able to return to their normal life but will require medication to continue without a trace of the illness, while an even smaller proportion will not return fully and will require supervision and some form of medication. The underlying message here is that there is treatment.
           Treatment not just in the form of just medication, but social forms of support from family and society at large. Not only in monetary terms but in our perception of people with mental illness.
Being on medication for the management of an illness must not be looked upon with disdain, but should be commended. A lot of people find it difficult to complete a dose of antimalarial, be it a single day three tablet dose or the newer three day 24 tablet variety dose. People diagnosed with Diabetes, Hypertension or Sickle Cell Disease are on medication for their condition for life, some forms of mental illness are no different.
            In essence where there is life there is hope. Let’s try to focus more on the beauty that is the individual and less on what is required to keep that individual fully with us.