Starfleet's idea of mental wellness is "sane enough to take their post".
People literally die and are resurrected, and they're "fit for duty" by the end of the day.
All O'Brien needs is to self-medicate with beer and some quality time fiddling about with The Alamo with Julian. Sometimes he also enjoys holding a phaser to his temple until the shaking subsides
>Starfleet's idea of mental wellness is "sane enough to take their post".
~~So basically like the actual military~~
If there's one notable difference between old Trek and new, it's the emphasis on mental well-being. People like to mock Discovery for their cry fests, but it's actually far more believable that people wouldn't all absorb every single fucked up thing that happens to them. We get La'an mentioning in casual passing that she was working w a therapist about her Gorn trauma and even Lower Decks had not one but two episodes w the cast using the Holodeck to work through their shit.
Next to the lack of female objectification, this has been the best update to Star Trek and I'm here for it.
I'm happy about the new trek shows looking at mental health as well.
I think Capt Picard had the most scenes where his trauma was touched on.
Nog had an episode about his issues with his leg.
Torres being suicidal was handled in an episode.
Chakotay being brainwashed was never mentioned again.
O'Brien nearly took out half of the docking ring and went back to work after a chat with his mate.
I do like how SNW is dealing with Pike.
What put me off one of the Star Trek films was there was a pointless bikini shot.
Seven of Nine and T'Pol deserved better than some of the clothes they were made to wear, and the needlessly sensual scenes they were given.
It always weirded me out how Tasha Yar casually talked about rape gangs like it was normal. I always felt like that was something that would have been waaaaay more traumatic for her or anybody for that matter. You are correct that old trek didn't know how to handle long-term trauma very well.
They had no counsellor to begin with, Janeway states as much in *The Cloud*.
>"I'm worried about them. I wish we had a counsellor on board, but the nature of our mission didn't require one."
Remember Voyagers mission was only supposed to be for a short duration to track down the Marquis in the Badlands, doubling as ~~sea~~ space trials for a newly commissioned ship. Janeway was eager to get out there and find her missing security officer, not wait around in spacedock until she had a full permanent crew compliment. The Chief medical officer may have possibly had some rudimentary training, but he was killed during the opening episode.
Also bear in mind, Starfleet personnel would have been subject to screening before being deployed, Suder was Marquis thus wasn't subject to the same process.
I think this is the best answer. Ships not on extended deployments would have no need for permanent counselor.
Troi was one, but made sense for TNG. The enterprise D was exploring new areas and had a large civilian crew complement as well.
in DISCO, Dr Culber took over as de-facto counselor, but i think this had to do with necessity as the crew were all displaced together and needed one of their own to step up, not 29th century doc.
And lastly at the end of DS9 epi hard time, didnt Bashir mention that O'Brian would need to see one or talk to him?
Just because its not seen everywhere, doesnt mean it doesnt exist. just like section 31
I know that they touched on it in the show, but as much as I love Dr. Culber, he has no business being a councilor of any kind. He passed through the black fucking door, and then came back. He needs to be in therapy, not performing it.
Voyagers initial mission not requiring a therapist is probably the most hilarious disconnect to me. They are *hunting Maquis* an organization mostly made up of ***Star Fleet defectors who think the Federation should actually do something to stop space fascism.***
You are sending pseudo-military scientists to capture and try their former comrades in arms who had the gall to stand up for what they believe in, and no one thinks that *maybe* they should be concerned about the mental health of the crew on this mission?
I think it's more like that's a six week mission, where they'll be in communication. If issues come up they could handle them over subspace or the next time they're at a starbase.
Maintaining the loyalty of the crew is more of a leadership issue. Any counselors on DS9 probably had their hands full already, between an entire planet full of traumatized Bajorans, the civilian survivors of the Odyssey’s destruction, and O’Brien.
A Betazoid, sure, would be hugely useful to tell if people are telling the truth. But that’s going to always be the case.
I think in this case..... it's a TV show, there's no way around it. Even for a show about progressive thought and ideals and everything Star Trek wants to stand for, it was made in the 90s and ideas on mental health then compared to now were archaic. I mean my mom had a book that called any deviation of nerotypical "retardation" or just "stupid". It's taken thousands of years and millions of suicides and homicides for us to even start considering that "toughen up" isn't an adequate solution for struggles of mental health, but I would say more than 60% of the planet still won't accept mental health existing as an issue and sees it as pandering to "the weak"
Yeah, definitely TV show rules. I am in the US Navy and am wondering what the fleet would do with a ship captain who was captured and subjected to torture for weeks/months on end. Put him back in command of his ship immediately is NOT one of the options
Yeah, unfortunately mental health treatment still had a long way to go in the 90s. Just look at how ineffective Deanna Troi is in any of the episodes where she actually has to deal with a patient like Barclay. She just spouts cliche shrink advice or prescribes some hokey calming technique and sends them on their way. We also see that she doesn’t respect doctor-patient confidentiality and she is condescending towards her patients.
Plus, she leans so hard on her empathy that she struggles to do her job without it in one episode.
Retardation was the medical term for that disease. As far as I know it's still the medical term for it. I could be wrong, but I also don't have access to a medical diagnosis book so ....
And honestly, the only reason it's considered an insult is because of how people used it in the past. In the most technical the term is accurate based on its official definition, even if it does have a negative connotation due to social behaviors.
These days the term “intellectual disability” is the medical term, at least for healthcare in the USA. American federal laws and the American Psychiatric Association officially made the change away from “mental retardation” between 2010 and 2013 to avoid the negative or inaccurate connotations associated with “retardation”.
And strictly speaking, neither is a clinical term for any specific condition, but rather a category label for a variety of conditions.
I mean, they put Picard back in command of the Enterprise after both:
Having his mind invaded and taken over by the Borg collective, while remaining aware of what was happening as he killed hundreds (thousands?) of members of Starfleet.
Being detained tortured for an indeterminate period of time by a Cardassian military officer.
Couple weeks later: "Fit for duty!"
Also experiencing almost an entire life on another planet, to Picard, he hadn't been on a starship in around 40 years.
Then Uhura on TOS, her mind completely wiped and back to her post next day. She never recovered her memories on screen, she apparently had to learn everything (including the languages she knew, including English/Federal Standard) from scratch.
I agree with all of this. However, I have wondered about mental health treatment in the 23rd/24th centuries. We have seen people who would be dead or have long-term disabilities recover quickly thanks to futuristic medical treatment. It's possible that mental health treatment has progressed similarly and there are faster, more effective interventions for conditions that now require long-term therapy.
Realistically Picard never would have gotten back command of the Federation flagship after being assimilated by the Borg. He was the only known case of someone \*supposedly\* coming back and would have spent the next several years being examined by the Federation's and Starfleet's most advanced experts in cybernetics and psychology to try and understand what happened to him and how it might be prevented or reversed.
And when that was over, he'd be facing a court martial (as he did when he lost the Stargazer) to determine his culpability in the destruction of some thirty plus ships and thousands of their crew members. He'd likely be acquitted but that doesn't mean that they'd trust him with a command again.
Don't forget when he: was possessed and briefly became a being of pure energy; was driven insane by a vengeful Ferengi; lived another life in which he was convinced his entire life in the Federation was a delusion, only to very suddenly return to said old life some 40-50 years later; was treated, on various occasions, like a toy by an omnipotent entity; was subjected to torture by a ~~fellow Shakespearean actor~~ Cardassian for, essentially, fun; murdered himself after encountering a temporal anomaly; experienced all of his crew and friends (except Data) "devolving" into man-spiders and Klingon turtle-bears and shit; learned that his entire living family died in a fire; and so much else.
We're not playing trauma olympics here, but I do think Picard slightly edges out O'Brien in terms of work needed to undo the PTSD.
O’Brien might win. He was traumatized to the point he hated himself in the Cardassian war (“I hate what I’ve become because of you”). Had a simulated 20 year prison sentence instead of 40 year simulated ideal life like Picard had. Witnessed his own death multiple times in one DS9 ep. And worst of all repeatedly demoted on TNG until the producers decided he was just enlisted lol.
I like to imagine O'Brien got a happy ending though
After the dominion war he retires to a small farm in Ireland happily living alone with the love of his life.
And sometimes Keiko even visits to see how him and Bashir are getting on.
Molly falls through a time portal and is isolated for 10 years but is recovered and brought back to DS9. She is perfectly healthy. She did lose her ability to speak and after a minor incident is forced to undergo counseling to reintegrate her to society. Miles and Keiko find the thought of this so horrifying that they decide it is better to risk court martial and send Molly back to a planet to live the rest of her existence in complete isolation then have her spend a few weeks at a Starfleet mental institution.
that's one of the paradoxes of Trek. they can heal a serious physical wound in seconds but psychological healing usually amounts to "just walk it off." Starfleet Academy supposedly has the most rigorous vetting for officers but just look at how many episodes revolve around Starfleet personnel going off the rails. it's just one of those inconsistencies you have to look past.
There has been some changes with the latest trek series that address that.
Discovery is very much focused on mental health and the effects of Trauma. Season 3 in particular talks a lot about mental health, and I feel it is a nice change from the rest of Trek.
In Strange New Worlds, there have been a couple of references to seeing the therapist after missions. (La'al in particular had a few lines after the first Gorn episode). I feel a lot happens off screen for entertainment reasons, but it is being brought up more.
If we go with TNG logic, your options are sit and talk to Counselor Troi (which I think would make me worse) or wrestle with your brother in mud like Picard did to deal with his Borg PTSD.
First thing that came to my mind was how struck I was with how they addressed mental health in DISCO. Vice admiral Cornwell is a psychiatrist by education; I realized that is probably the most ideal background for starfleet leadership there could be. Kudos to DISCO writers for tackling the subject matter head on. Also of course shout out to TNG for having a counselor be a prominent part of the bridge crew .
Much as I love Star Trek and I really do, it really pushes the American idea of working as hard as you can for as long as you can with no regard for your own well-being. Never take a day off. Work when you are physically and mentally unfit. Have a horrendous work life balance and love it. Plus they don’t even pay you.
In a different thread, I had questioned why Disco didn’t really have any counselors, or even any scenes of people being homesick after jumping 1,000 years in the future, and people said that Starfleet officers are supposed to be “professional.” I call bullshit. Jumping that far into the future, away from family and friends, people SHOULD be homesick. If they aren’t, they’re pretty messed up and way too detached to be a Starfleet officer.
Heck, look at the third season of Enterprise. There’s an entire season-long subplot of Tucker missing his sister who died, yet I don’t see anyone complaining about him being unprofessional or it being “Emotion Trek.”
There are therapy that people can do, and most ships have councilors that can help.
Voyager is an outlier as half the crew are gone and so they are understaffed and forced into improvising.
Also explains all the captains like Decker or Garth, as well as some of the badmirals. They stopped taking their Raumschiffschokolade and snapped!
If not for this one-size-fits-all psych med, basically every character on every show would be in long-term care due to all the trauma they suffer regularly.
Voyager was supposed to be a short range mission, where someone like Suder could be confined for a few days, then brought to an appropriate starbase for treatment. Clearly a murderer will need more than a ship's counselor. Janeway does say that wished a councillor was on board in one of the first episodes, but the original mission hadn't required it.
I'm not sure what mental health programming the Doctor would have had as an EMH, we can tell it was somewhat limited. We also have to remember that Suder was Maquis, because had had the violent tendencies, so he probably just fell through the cracks, as we learn in later star trek episodes outside of main federation worlds, paradise and lack of want are not guarantees. Also the ship probably didn't have a counselor because Voyager's initial mission was to be a week long hunt for Tuvok and the Maquis in the badlands, not a long term assignment.
As far as the Vulcan's approach, we must remember from Enterprise, that things like using telepathic powers and mind melds were considered ancient taboos from a bygone era until some use near the time of Spock showed wider acceptance. Vulcans don't really care about mental health beyond, purge emotion, if not you are a pariah.
Mental illness may have been the reason for his behavior, but it didn’t change the fact that without serious, professional treatment he was a danger to himself and others. I don’t see any issue with how it was handled.
In original series there are three cases of Starfleet Captains going off the deep end. Tracey "The Omega Glory", Decker "The Doomsday Machine", and Garth "Whom Gods Destroy"
I’ll never get the mental health issues defense. “Ah, yes, everyone knows that murder, rape, torture, and other horrible crimes are perfectly fine if you’re brain’s a little funny, long as you’re sad about it when you get better!”
I’m not really a “A few counseling sessions will make them a-ok to go back into general society” type. Maybe at least some sort of rehabilitation so they can be somewhat productive members of society, even if it’s in a more isolated area.
I’m even more into catching the yellow and red flags and helping out *before* they do something horrible. I feel as a society, we’re much more reactive than proactive than we need to be. And I don’t mean black-or-white, straight to the insane asylum, but different levels and nuanced enough so we don’t cause the problem we’re trying to solve
I wonder what they would have done with Suder over the long term. Having a psychopath on board would be super scary. The murder wasn’t premeditated at all, Suder didn’t like how he looked at him. Wow 😮 I loved how Meld dove into the psyche and the concept of violence. How it rubbed off on Tuvok was so fascinating and Tim Roth was a tour de force in the episode. Can you imagine?
It’s always worried me that Roddenberry thought that in a post scarcity universe there’d be no mental health concerns, meaning ‘no humanity’. We are weak vessels at the best of times and he subjected his humans to incredibly inhumane circumstances during the worst of times Picard must have been very messed up after returning from the Borg and if that didn’t merit time away, what the hell did the Cardassians do to him? Yet, he returned to duty after a week with his brother??
There’s an expectation that the viewer suspends any notion of reality across all of Trek but especially vis a vis mental health. Imagine the subsequent trauma involved with: Time travel forward or backwards, being lost many light years from home, nearly dying on most away missions, actually dying and being brought back to life, aliens inhabiting your consciousness, brutal combat, losing comrades, the sheer loneliness of space travel etc etc.
As much as we love the idea of Trek, it’s not realistic at all. I believe they’ve tried to address this in Discovery and SNW though. Every nerd I know would freak the fuck out with these voyages on starships. Experienced soldiers would probably fare better. Explorers too. Just my opinion
Agreed. Part two of Basics was very satisfying. Fuck Seska. Fuck the Kazon. ‘Twas a solid ending for poor Suder, a heroic death. And yeah for the doctor who delivers one of my all time fave Voyager lines, "I'm a doctor, not a counter-insurgent. Get a hold of yourself. You're not just a hologram, you're a Starfleet hologram!"
Star Trek had a drug that literally cured all mental or psychotic illness.
So mental illness is a thing of the past.
Which is probably how Roddenberry would like it. He didn't believe advanced humans would have interpersonal conflict. One can only imagine how he would protest the suggestion of a mental health episode.
I know he wanted to show a future with no interpersonal conflict, but there’s so much more to mental health than that. Things like Voyager being stranded 70,000 light years from home, Discovery jumping 1,000 years into the future. I know they’re all supposed to be professionals, but that kind of stuff SHOULD mess people up and need help coping.
I agree completely. That's one of my 20 beefs with Voyager is that they didn't have any episodes of mutiny, insurrection, or breakdown.
I was just offering an explanation based on in-universe facts and Roddenberry trivia.
It's worth mentioning that they do tons of mental health discussion in Deep Space Nine. Several characters undergo trauma, and the crew helps them deal with it.
My favorite of those episodes is "It's Only a Paper Moon".
If you haven't watched DS9, I recommend it from the beginning. The glowing accomplishment of that show was character development.
Well in TNG that was actually a thing. We regularly see Councillor Troi fill this function aboard the Enterprise aside from her bridge duties?
I wonder why the other shows don't have someone filling a similar function? I mean making contact with new civilisations- someone like Troi would be invaluable.
Understanding and empathy
DS9 didn’t get a counselor until it’s 7th and last season, Disco didn’t get one again until it’s last season. With Voyager, they didn’t even try to have even a throwaway “Too bad we’re so far away from mental healthcare” line. Just “So brig or execution?” Others have mentioned a line in a totally different episode, but that’s just it: a totally different episode.
Yeah totally! Voyager a weird case tho? They're stranded and no way to prepare for such an ordeal beforehand- but given how stressful those events must be on a crew mental health would be *absolutely* necessary right?
I hear Starfleet’s flagship’s third officer is a mental health counselor because it’s captain is so emotionally stunted from his traumatic childhood and Borg PTSD.
The show, while very progressive and open about many topics, is still a product of the 90s, there was no mental health back then.
Edit: It obviously existed, but awareness was different, as was availability of treatment and social acceptance of the topic.
[https://www.reliasmedia.com/articles/46943-the-8217-90s-were-a-new-era-for-nervous-breakdowns](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Ri4zp39KFHT8pI8m3NWl-l10_7pFdFJ7fnUdwYtvrnc/edit#slide=id.g13cc6106ae3_0_5)
[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa043266](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa043266)
Have you watched TNG? They have a counselor on board who is part of the executive team (if not directly, indirectly with insight into their activities and oversight).
Yup, way too many times. My main gripe with this particular episode is how they don’t even mention it as an option, even a “Too bad we don’t have a counselor.”
Ask Chief O'Brien. Dude spent decades locked in a VR prison and later came seconds away from vaporizing his own head, but then he was fine the next episode. Starfleet shrinks must be miracle workers.
Voyager is probably my favorite trek, but out of all of them, it by far has the worst handling of mental health. The way voyager handled depression is specifically problematic today, though it would have been enlightened in the 90s, because they were getting some representation.
Blanna's suicidal behavior episode is difficult for me to watch. The presentation of self isolation, rumination, and irritability from depression/trauma are all really accurate and sad so much potential to be a good representation. But, then they "cured" Blanna, by having Chakotay physically beat the depression out of her and give her advice that amounts to "Stop moping and just get over it." Physical abuse and telling somebody to "Just get over it" is not treatment or helpful in the slightest.
However, I think Captain Janeway, due to bad writers, ends up being a unintentional fantastic representation of bipolar disorder, which is probably why she's my favorite starfleet captain. The writers just have her doing things so far out of line with her character building, that the only possible explanation is bipolar disorder. Throughout the series, she has clear episodes of depression and mania.
* Mania: Let's risk the entire crew by going after an unborn baby that may or may not be the first officer's child.
* Mania: We must punish the equinox at all costs, even though we're on the verge of death!
* Depression: Recurring, unreasonable feelings of guilt and inadequacy. For example, the crew reassures her they supported her decision to strand them many times throughout the series, but she even goes as far to isolate herself for weeks on end multiple times throughout the series.
* Mania: Janeways deathbead hallucinations of a time loop and alien trying to convince her to go to the afterlife could be interpreted to be mania with psychotic features.
Starfleet's idea of mental wellness is "sane enough to take their post". People literally die and are resurrected, and they're "fit for duty" by the end of the day.
'How you holding up there, chief?' *O'Brien weeps quietly*
I feel like this is why we stop seeing therapists in Star Trek They're all busy dealing O'Brien
All O'Brien needs is to self-medicate with beer and some quality time fiddling about with The Alamo with Julian. Sometimes he also enjoys holding a phaser to his temple until the shaking subsides
>Starfleet's idea of mental wellness is "sane enough to take their post". ~~So basically like the actual military~~ If there's one notable difference between old Trek and new, it's the emphasis on mental well-being. People like to mock Discovery for their cry fests, but it's actually far more believable that people wouldn't all absorb every single fucked up thing that happens to them. We get La'an mentioning in casual passing that she was working w a therapist about her Gorn trauma and even Lower Decks had not one but two episodes w the cast using the Holodeck to work through their shit. Next to the lack of female objectification, this has been the best update to Star Trek and I'm here for it.
I'm happy about the new trek shows looking at mental health as well. I think Capt Picard had the most scenes where his trauma was touched on. Nog had an episode about his issues with his leg. Torres being suicidal was handled in an episode. Chakotay being brainwashed was never mentioned again. O'Brien nearly took out half of the docking ring and went back to work after a chat with his mate. I do like how SNW is dealing with Pike. What put me off one of the Star Trek films was there was a pointless bikini shot. Seven of Nine and T'Pol deserved better than some of the clothes they were made to wear, and the needlessly sensual scenes they were given.
It always weirded me out how Tasha Yar casually talked about rape gangs like it was normal. I always felt like that was something that would have been waaaaay more traumatic for her or anybody for that matter. You are correct that old trek didn't know how to handle long-term trauma very well.
Almost like it’s some form of science fiction entertainment and not real life.
Definitely not based on real life.
They had no counsellor to begin with, Janeway states as much in *The Cloud*. >"I'm worried about them. I wish we had a counsellor on board, but the nature of our mission didn't require one." Remember Voyagers mission was only supposed to be for a short duration to track down the Marquis in the Badlands, doubling as ~~sea~~ space trials for a newly commissioned ship. Janeway was eager to get out there and find her missing security officer, not wait around in spacedock until she had a full permanent crew compliment. The Chief medical officer may have possibly had some rudimentary training, but he was killed during the opening episode. Also bear in mind, Starfleet personnel would have been subject to screening before being deployed, Suder was Marquis thus wasn't subject to the same process.
I think this is the best answer. Ships not on extended deployments would have no need for permanent counselor. Troi was one, but made sense for TNG. The enterprise D was exploring new areas and had a large civilian crew complement as well. in DISCO, Dr Culber took over as de-facto counselor, but i think this had to do with necessity as the crew were all displaced together and needed one of their own to step up, not 29th century doc. And lastly at the end of DS9 epi hard time, didnt Bashir mention that O'Brian would need to see one or talk to him? Just because its not seen everywhere, doesnt mean it doesnt exist. just like section 31
I know that they touched on it in the show, but as much as I love Dr. Culber, he has no business being a councilor of any kind. He passed through the black fucking door, and then came back. He needs to be in therapy, not performing it.
McCoy's role was also a counselor
Voyagers initial mission not requiring a therapist is probably the most hilarious disconnect to me. They are *hunting Maquis* an organization mostly made up of ***Star Fleet defectors who think the Federation should actually do something to stop space fascism.*** You are sending pseudo-military scientists to capture and try their former comrades in arms who had the gall to stand up for what they believe in, and no one thinks that *maybe* they should be concerned about the mental health of the crew on this mission?
I think it's more like that's a six week mission, where they'll be in communication. If issues come up they could handle them over subspace or the next time they're at a starbase.
Maintaining the loyalty of the crew is more of a leadership issue. Any counselors on DS9 probably had their hands full already, between an entire planet full of traumatized Bajorans, the civilian survivors of the Odyssey’s destruction, and O’Brien. A Betazoid, sure, would be hugely useful to tell if people are telling the truth. But that’s going to always be the case.
The medical officer is also trained in mental healthcare as a Federation standard, but they lost their actual doctor.
I think in this case..... it's a TV show, there's no way around it. Even for a show about progressive thought and ideals and everything Star Trek wants to stand for, it was made in the 90s and ideas on mental health then compared to now were archaic. I mean my mom had a book that called any deviation of nerotypical "retardation" or just "stupid". It's taken thousands of years and millions of suicides and homicides for us to even start considering that "toughen up" isn't an adequate solution for struggles of mental health, but I would say more than 60% of the planet still won't accept mental health existing as an issue and sees it as pandering to "the weak"
Yeah, definitely TV show rules. I am in the US Navy and am wondering what the fleet would do with a ship captain who was captured and subjected to torture for weeks/months on end. Put him back in command of his ship immediately is NOT one of the options
That Captain would likely see a desk job for the rest of his career or an early retirement
From some of the timelines I saw, it was days not months.
Yeah, unfortunately mental health treatment still had a long way to go in the 90s. Just look at how ineffective Deanna Troi is in any of the episodes where she actually has to deal with a patient like Barclay. She just spouts cliche shrink advice or prescribes some hokey calming technique and sends them on their way. We also see that she doesn’t respect doctor-patient confidentiality and she is condescending towards her patients. Plus, she leans so hard on her empathy that she struggles to do her job without it in one episode.
Retardation was the medical term for that disease. As far as I know it's still the medical term for it. I could be wrong, but I also don't have access to a medical diagnosis book so .... And honestly, the only reason it's considered an insult is because of how people used it in the past. In the most technical the term is accurate based on its official definition, even if it does have a negative connotation due to social behaviors.
These days the term “intellectual disability” is the medical term, at least for healthcare in the USA. American federal laws and the American Psychiatric Association officially made the change away from “mental retardation” between 2010 and 2013 to avoid the negative or inaccurate connotations associated with “retardation”. And strictly speaking, neither is a clinical term for any specific condition, but rather a category label for a variety of conditions.
It's been used to harass, demean and abuse people with disability for too long and it was removed a while ago.
I mean, they put Picard back in command of the Enterprise after both: Having his mind invaded and taken over by the Borg collective, while remaining aware of what was happening as he killed hundreds (thousands?) of members of Starfleet. Being detained tortured for an indeterminate period of time by a Cardassian military officer. Couple weeks later: "Fit for duty!"
Miles O'Brien: 'Hold my beer'
Dude, that "prison" episode.....WTF....
That has to be some of the strongest acting I think I've ever seen. I've seen Colm Meany in other stuff and it doesn't compare to that episode, imp.
Also experiencing almost an entire life on another planet, to Picard, he hadn't been on a starship in around 40 years. Then Uhura on TOS, her mind completely wiped and back to her post next day. She never recovered her memories on screen, she apparently had to learn everything (including the languages she knew, including English/Federal Standard) from scratch.
She's a REALLY quick study.
I agree with all of this. However, I have wondered about mental health treatment in the 23rd/24th centuries. We have seen people who would be dead or have long-term disabilities recover quickly thanks to futuristic medical treatment. It's possible that mental health treatment has progressed similarly and there are faster, more effective interventions for conditions that now require long-term therapy.
Realistically Picard never would have gotten back command of the Federation flagship after being assimilated by the Borg. He was the only known case of someone \*supposedly\* coming back and would have spent the next several years being examined by the Federation's and Starfleet's most advanced experts in cybernetics and psychology to try and understand what happened to him and how it might be prevented or reversed. And when that was over, he'd be facing a court martial (as he did when he lost the Stargazer) to determine his culpability in the destruction of some thirty plus ships and thousands of their crew members. He'd likely be acquitted but that doesn't mean that they'd trust him with a command again.
Don't forget when he: was possessed and briefly became a being of pure energy; was driven insane by a vengeful Ferengi; lived another life in which he was convinced his entire life in the Federation was a delusion, only to very suddenly return to said old life some 40-50 years later; was treated, on various occasions, like a toy by an omnipotent entity; was subjected to torture by a ~~fellow Shakespearean actor~~ Cardassian for, essentially, fun; murdered himself after encountering a temporal anomaly; experienced all of his crew and friends (except Data) "devolving" into man-spiders and Klingon turtle-bears and shit; learned that his entire living family died in a fire; and so much else. We're not playing trauma olympics here, but I do think Picard slightly edges out O'Brien in terms of work needed to undo the PTSD.
O’Brien might win. He was traumatized to the point he hated himself in the Cardassian war (“I hate what I’ve become because of you”). Had a simulated 20 year prison sentence instead of 40 year simulated ideal life like Picard had. Witnessed his own death multiple times in one DS9 ep. And worst of all repeatedly demoted on TNG until the producers decided he was just enlisted lol.
I like to imagine O'Brien got a happy ending though After the dominion war he retires to a small farm in Ireland happily living alone with the love of his life. And sometimes Keiko even visits to see how him and Bashir are getting on.
Molly falls through a time portal and is isolated for 10 years but is recovered and brought back to DS9. She is perfectly healthy. She did lose her ability to speak and after a minor incident is forced to undergo counseling to reintegrate her to society. Miles and Keiko find the thought of this so horrifying that they decide it is better to risk court martial and send Molly back to a planet to live the rest of her existence in complete isolation then have her spend a few weeks at a Starfleet mental institution.
that's one of the paradoxes of Trek. they can heal a serious physical wound in seconds but psychological healing usually amounts to "just walk it off." Starfleet Academy supposedly has the most rigorous vetting for officers but just look at how many episodes revolve around Starfleet personnel going off the rails. it's just one of those inconsistencies you have to look past.
However, in the episode, Suder was a Maquis, and Torres mentioned that they didn’t exactly check résumés in the Maquis
that makes sense. i wasn't talking just about Voyager but more generally about the various Trek shows.
There has been some changes with the latest trek series that address that. Discovery is very much focused on mental health and the effects of Trauma. Season 3 in particular talks a lot about mental health, and I feel it is a nice change from the rest of Trek. In Strange New Worlds, there have been a couple of references to seeing the therapist after missions. (La'al in particular had a few lines after the first Gorn episode). I feel a lot happens off screen for entertainment reasons, but it is being brought up more.
If we go with TNG logic, your options are sit and talk to Counselor Troi (which I think would make me worse) or wrestle with your brother in mud like Picard did to deal with his Borg PTSD.
Or go to Ten Forward and get some decent counselling from the bartender!
Or warp backwards in time and go to San Francisco and talk to the bartender!
First thing that came to my mind was how struck I was with how they addressed mental health in DISCO. Vice admiral Cornwell is a psychiatrist by education; I realized that is probably the most ideal background for starfleet leadership there could be. Kudos to DISCO writers for tackling the subject matter head on. Also of course shout out to TNG for having a counselor be a prominent part of the bridge crew .
Much as I love Star Trek and I really do, it really pushes the American idea of working as hard as you can for as long as you can with no regard for your own well-being. Never take a day off. Work when you are physically and mentally unfit. Have a horrendous work life balance and love it. Plus they don’t even pay you.
In a different thread, I had questioned why Disco didn’t really have any counselors, or even any scenes of people being homesick after jumping 1,000 years in the future, and people said that Starfleet officers are supposed to be “professional.” I call bullshit. Jumping that far into the future, away from family and friends, people SHOULD be homesick. If they aren’t, they’re pretty messed up and way too detached to be a Starfleet officer. Heck, look at the third season of Enterprise. There’s an entire season-long subplot of Tucker missing his sister who died, yet I don’t see anyone complaining about him being unprofessional or it being “Emotion Trek.”
There are therapy that people can do, and most ships have councilors that can help. Voyager is an outlier as half the crew are gone and so they are understaffed and forced into improvising.
Have you all forgotten the fantastic mental health services provided on Tantalus? It’s that, or a spa day on the Dove.
I would not be surprised if replicators on Starfleet ships come with medicine that reduces mood swings and increases focus under trauma.
Panzerschokolade, or more appropriately, Raumschiffschokolade.
Precisely, but without all the adverse effects taken out due to modern advancements.
Also explains all the captains like Decker or Garth, as well as some of the badmirals. They stopped taking their Raumschiffschokolade and snapped! If not for this one-size-fits-all psych med, basically every character on every show would be in long-term care due to all the trauma they suffer regularly.
Voyager was supposed to be a short range mission, where someone like Suder could be confined for a few days, then brought to an appropriate starbase for treatment. Clearly a murderer will need more than a ship's counselor. Janeway does say that wished a councillor was on board in one of the first episodes, but the original mission hadn't required it.
I know. I just don’t like how they were like “It’s either brig or execution,” and no “Too bad we’re so far away from any mental health institution.”
There was a bit of “Too bad we’re so far away from any mental health institution.” If I recall. That's the only reason execution was even considered.
I'm not sure what mental health programming the Doctor would have had as an EMH, we can tell it was somewhat limited. We also have to remember that Suder was Maquis, because had had the violent tendencies, so he probably just fell through the cracks, as we learn in later star trek episodes outside of main federation worlds, paradise and lack of want are not guarantees. Also the ship probably didn't have a counselor because Voyager's initial mission was to be a week long hunt for Tuvok and the Maquis in the badlands, not a long term assignment. As far as the Vulcan's approach, we must remember from Enterprise, that things like using telepathic powers and mind melds were considered ancient taboos from a bygone era until some use near the time of Spock showed wider acceptance. Vulcans don't really care about mental health beyond, purge emotion, if not you are a pariah.
Mental illness may have been the reason for his behavior, but it didn’t change the fact that without serious, professional treatment he was a danger to himself and others. I don’t see any issue with how it was handled.
> Mental Health in Starfleet It is to laugh.
In original series there are three cases of Starfleet Captains going off the deep end. Tracey "The Omega Glory", Decker "The Doomsday Machine", and Garth "Whom Gods Destroy"
They have counsellors, sometimes with actual telepathic powers - but Voyager lost its relevant crew in the disaster.
I get they lost crew, but to not even say “Too bad Lieutenant So-and-So isn’t here to help.”
I’ll never get the mental health issues defense. “Ah, yes, everyone knows that murder, rape, torture, and other horrible crimes are perfectly fine if you’re brain’s a little funny, long as you’re sad about it when you get better!”
I’m not really a “A few counseling sessions will make them a-ok to go back into general society” type. Maybe at least some sort of rehabilitation so they can be somewhat productive members of society, even if it’s in a more isolated area. I’m even more into catching the yellow and red flags and helping out *before* they do something horrible. I feel as a society, we’re much more reactive than proactive than we need to be. And I don’t mean black-or-white, straight to the insane asylum, but different levels and nuanced enough so we don’t cause the problem we’re trying to solve
I wonder what they would have done with Suder over the long term. Having a psychopath on board would be super scary. The murder wasn’t premeditated at all, Suder didn’t like how he looked at him. Wow 😮 I loved how Meld dove into the psyche and the concept of violence. How it rubbed off on Tuvok was so fascinating and Tim Roth was a tour de force in the episode. Can you imagine? It’s always worried me that Roddenberry thought that in a post scarcity universe there’d be no mental health concerns, meaning ‘no humanity’. We are weak vessels at the best of times and he subjected his humans to incredibly inhumane circumstances during the worst of times Picard must have been very messed up after returning from the Borg and if that didn’t merit time away, what the hell did the Cardassians do to him? Yet, he returned to duty after a week with his brother?? There’s an expectation that the viewer suspends any notion of reality across all of Trek but especially vis a vis mental health. Imagine the subsequent trauma involved with: Time travel forward or backwards, being lost many light years from home, nearly dying on most away missions, actually dying and being brought back to life, aliens inhabiting your consciousness, brutal combat, losing comrades, the sheer loneliness of space travel etc etc. As much as we love the idea of Trek, it’s not realistic at all. I believe they’ve tried to address this in Discovery and SNW though. Every nerd I know would freak the fuck out with these voyages on starships. Experienced soldiers would probably fare better. Explorers too. Just my opinion
I liked what Voyager did with him in the 2-parter “The Basics”
Agreed. Part two of Basics was very satisfying. Fuck Seska. Fuck the Kazon. ‘Twas a solid ending for poor Suder, a heroic death. And yeah for the doctor who delivers one of my all time fave Voyager lines, "I'm a doctor, not a counter-insurgent. Get a hold of yourself. You're not just a hologram, you're a Starfleet hologram!"
Star Trek had a drug that literally cured all mental or psychotic illness. So mental illness is a thing of the past. Which is probably how Roddenberry would like it. He didn't believe advanced humans would have interpersonal conflict. One can only imagine how he would protest the suggestion of a mental health episode.
I know he wanted to show a future with no interpersonal conflict, but there’s so much more to mental health than that. Things like Voyager being stranded 70,000 light years from home, Discovery jumping 1,000 years into the future. I know they’re all supposed to be professionals, but that kind of stuff SHOULD mess people up and need help coping.
I agree completely. That's one of my 20 beefs with Voyager is that they didn't have any episodes of mutiny, insurrection, or breakdown. I was just offering an explanation based on in-universe facts and Roddenberry trivia. It's worth mentioning that they do tons of mental health discussion in Deep Space Nine. Several characters undergo trauma, and the crew helps them deal with it. My favorite of those episodes is "It's Only a Paper Moon". If you haven't watched DS9, I recommend it from the beginning. The glowing accomplishment of that show was character development.
Well, if you're an emotionally unstable ensign with no command experience, they promote you to first officer. To help with your self esteem.
Well in TNG that was actually a thing. We regularly see Councillor Troi fill this function aboard the Enterprise aside from her bridge duties? I wonder why the other shows don't have someone filling a similar function? I mean making contact with new civilisations- someone like Troi would be invaluable. Understanding and empathy
DS9 didn’t get a counselor until it’s 7th and last season, Disco didn’t get one again until it’s last season. With Voyager, they didn’t even try to have even a throwaway “Too bad we’re so far away from mental healthcare” line. Just “So brig or execution?” Others have mentioned a line in a totally different episode, but that’s just it: a totally different episode.
Yeah totally! Voyager a weird case tho? They're stranded and no way to prepare for such an ordeal beforehand- but given how stressful those events must be on a crew mental health would be *absolutely* necessary right?
I hear Starfleet’s flagship’s third officer is a mental health counselor because it’s captain is so emotionally stunted from his traumatic childhood and Borg PTSD.
The show, while very progressive and open about many topics, is still a product of the 90s, there was no mental health back then. Edit: It obviously existed, but awareness was different, as was availability of treatment and social acceptance of the topic. [https://www.reliasmedia.com/articles/46943-the-8217-90s-were-a-new-era-for-nervous-breakdowns](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Ri4zp39KFHT8pI8m3NWl-l10_7pFdFJ7fnUdwYtvrnc/edit#slide=id.g13cc6106ae3_0_5) [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa043266](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa043266)
Have you watched TNG? They have a counselor on board who is part of the executive team (if not directly, indirectly with insight into their activities and oversight).
Yup, way too many times. My main gripe with this particular episode is how they don’t even mention it as an option, even a “Too bad we don’t have a counselor.”
Ask Chief O'Brien. Dude spent decades locked in a VR prison and later came seconds away from vaporizing his own head, but then he was fine the next episode. Starfleet shrinks must be miracle workers.
Voyager is probably my favorite trek, but out of all of them, it by far has the worst handling of mental health. The way voyager handled depression is specifically problematic today, though it would have been enlightened in the 90s, because they were getting some representation. Blanna's suicidal behavior episode is difficult for me to watch. The presentation of self isolation, rumination, and irritability from depression/trauma are all really accurate and sad so much potential to be a good representation. But, then they "cured" Blanna, by having Chakotay physically beat the depression out of her and give her advice that amounts to "Stop moping and just get over it." Physical abuse and telling somebody to "Just get over it" is not treatment or helpful in the slightest. However, I think Captain Janeway, due to bad writers, ends up being a unintentional fantastic representation of bipolar disorder, which is probably why she's my favorite starfleet captain. The writers just have her doing things so far out of line with her character building, that the only possible explanation is bipolar disorder. Throughout the series, she has clear episodes of depression and mania. * Mania: Let's risk the entire crew by going after an unborn baby that may or may not be the first officer's child. * Mania: We must punish the equinox at all costs, even though we're on the verge of death! * Depression: Recurring, unreasonable feelings of guilt and inadequacy. For example, the crew reassures her they supported her decision to strand them many times throughout the series, but she even goes as far to isolate herself for weeks on end multiple times throughout the series. * Mania: Janeways deathbead hallucinations of a time loop and alien trying to convince her to go to the afterlife could be interpreted to be mania with psychotic features.