Have you ever heard of a government or an agency suffering from a mental health issue? How about any type of personality disorders? No. I have not heard of that either. However, I believe there is a possibility to diagnose a government or an organization with personality disorders such as borderline or antisocial, and why not obsessive-compulsive disorder. We just play this game to see where we get.
It is my understanding that one of the works that psychologists do is to assess and to diagnose.
Clinical assessment and clinical opinion is the basis for making a case, basically checking all the evidence and formulating a report about the kind of mental health person is suffering from. One of the many fundamentals that psychologists study in order to do their assessment is to look at personality, traits, values, and aptitudes. In addition to that a psychological resume, meaning a list of how the person view the world and interact with the world, is also helpful. The personality characteristics show who the person is and what the person does, in terms of behavior, thoughts, and affects. 
Mental health illnesses and personality disorders are one of problems that any person, any agency, any government can get stuck in, if they do not have healthy outlooks. If we look at the borderline disorder in which the person moves between neurotics and psychotics, we certainly could find many unhealthy and dysfunctional behaviors.
Now within this framework and introduction we can continue the game and see if we only can assess a person with psychological disorders. How about a borderline government? How about an organization with narcissistic personality traits? How about an agency with anxiety disorders? The list could be long. Still we can continue this game, how about an ailing system where personality of that construct shows through the ill attitudes, harmful policy making decisions, corrupted law enforcement, and biased social services they provide? I believe we could assess and diagnose a government or an organization as a whole embodied concept. In evaluating our personified government or organization we could conceptualize the structure and analyze the personality traits of that whole body.
Let say that this imagined (still we know many of them out there) borderline government shifts rapidly between neurotics and psychosis, never giving their citizens and the world a chance to realize what is really going on. Or, let say that a government with panic disorder or phobia illness acts at panicky and neurotic. What happen to its citizens or those life this government has impact on? What if this embodied construct act this way all the time? What about if the existence of this organization depending on the victim role and I-have-all-the rights-type of perspective? The authorities of such government will soon pick up the sick traits and they will come across all the bizarre regulations and ideologies to feed people while misery and disappointments are the real outcomes.
Some governments could both be cancer stricken and suffering from psychotic personality disorders, while they use all sorts of defense mechanisms to proof they are right and everyone else is wrong. In the neurotic mood, this government or structure, makes people suffer and sets them up for failure. In those delusional and psychotic moods, these bodies of structure behaves acts, contemplate, communicates, and shows affect in a real unhealthy, self-destructive, and most confusing manner.
In the psychotic mood this government might get stuck in its delusional nature and hunt those who are marked as spies, intimidating, and different. What many psychotic murderers might say about their crimes is that they were threatened by someone or found the threat immense, or they do not recall what happened once the crime occurred.
Anti-Social governments may even call their people many different horrible names, dehumanize them, and do everything that life becomes the most miserable one for their nation. Do they choose this behavior? I do not know. It may be due to their nature and characteristic constructs.
The constant movements between psychosis, neurosis, dysfunctional mood, and panic- attaches, these governments give the outsiders and all those involved less and less opportunity to predict what is happening next. If you ask people who live within those borderline or mentally challenged structures, you will hear that they would rather have this government on the neurotic mood and not on the psychotic side. Why? Because once the government is neurotic at least healthy minded citizens will have a chance to escape the attacks by hiding somewhere or not showing up in the places these unhealthy authorizes might be. Some lucky people find ways to bounce many hideous impacts this ill system have on their lives. However, not everyone in such a system has same chances as an ill system or government manages to manufacture lies after lies to cover up the incurable illness.
Psychologists may find much intervention with such government; still, this structure is on its guard and in attack-mood. Borderline personality disorder is known for the love and hate relationship, for the black and white thinking, and for the constant shifts between bad and worse. People who are living within the four black walls of these mentally ill governments are truly victimized, they have no choice but living with the nasty circumstances that these ill-minded authorities create. What is the cure? I am not sure.
Behavior being a habit, the habits of such government can not be broken, can not be challenged, and can not be replaced with new ones because this government is truly sick, irrational, emotional, and on guards. Whoever tries to challenge this government falls in the black side of their list and is condemned.
Another factor that psychologists analyze is the level of intelligence of a person. Intelligence means the level of reasoning, the level of judgment, the level of memory, and the ability for abstraction. The level of irrationality of the mentally challenged or personality challenged people is high. The government at this stage of illness creates danger for itself and everyone else by this high level of irrationality. What is the cure again? I am not sure.
What I am sure is that we know at least a couple of these governments with the most incurable personality disorders. We all have suffered in the hands of these systems that are sick to their stomach, still they will not let go of the power. How we can help this illness, the illness of black and white thinking, and the illness of seeing the world being one-dimensional? I am not sure again.
This dysfunctional government has personality traits, values, interests, attitudes, world view, conditions, and desires that are totally inline with their in congruent behavior and inconsistencies.
The cure might be to ask them to step down and find another group of healthy, functioning, and stable structure who is willing to repair and to construct. Negotiation and reasoning does not work with ill-minded governments. Although we will not deal with mentally ill people in an inhumane way, still we can not let them be in decision making forces that make others life a torture. If these people are in power, they have to step down and be hospitalized, placed in safe containers while no one can let them out again, at least some of them. No more we give them the power to decide over others life. No more.
Note: This article was originally written and published in EzineArticles July 21, 2008 by this author.
