What If the Mad are Actually the Sane Ones? (satire)

What if madness is when common sense calls to us but we forgot how to listen to ourselves because our fragile connection to reality is broken temporarily?

Then medical intervention comes to the moment of psychic healing when we either remain in fear, unable to rise above madness, or we boldly go on to heal, and to become whole, using humility to reconnect to reality.

Mere mortals would confuse the mad for those people who have risen above madness, due to their fear and ignorance about madness.

What if the State assumes that madness should be controlled by medication because of that same fear?

Then these same medications are administered not only to relieve the mad of their affliction but also to relieve the fear which "normal" people feel when faced with the mad.

How absurd that we subject the mad to medication to relieve our own fears about madness itself!

Is this not the height of madness itself, that we subject others to medication to control them so that we ourselves may feel less fear towards them?

Even so, we do not take medication to relieve our own fears about madness because of the delusion that we ourselves consider ourselves sane while assuming that the mad are insane.

In doing so, we prove how insane society truly is! Perhaps then the truly mad are kept safe from society in psychiatric wards so as to be protected from society.

Then the purpose of medication is to calm extremely nervous people so that they may function in a society that has yet to overcome the stigma of mental illness.

Sometimes I ask these questions with the insight that the majority of people with mental illness are mostly non-violent people. Anyone who is violent and legally insane are excluded from this definition of sanity as madness. This is because their behavior forms part of the etiology of the psychopath.

Rather this so-called argument is satire designed to de-stigmatize mental illness.

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Originally posted: May 20, 2005 08:18 PM

Fighting the Stigma of Mental Illness

One of the best ways to fight stigma and develop an open mind towards people with mental illness is to get to know someone with mental health problems and discover that the illness is only one aspect of his or her life.

Another way is to speak up when friends, family or the media use language that discriminates against people on the basis of mental health problems.

Here are some common signs of prejudice:

• stereotyping people with mental illness (treating them as a group rather than as individuals)
• trivializing or belittling people with mental illness and/or the illness itself
• offending people with mental illness through insults
• patronizing people with mental illness by treating them as less worthy than other people
• reinforcing common myths about people with mental illness: for example, saying they are dangerous, weak, beyond hope, etc.
• labelling people by their diagnosis; the concept of the person as an individual is lost, and the illness is the only relevant characteristic when terms such as paranoid schizophrenic, manic depressive and bulimic are used
• using slang words such as "insane," "schizo" and "psycho," which are often used in news headlines to grab readers' attention
• sensationalizing or accentuating myths about mental illness: for example, a headline such as "Psychotic Bear Kills Camper" links wild animal behaviour with mental illness

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Reference:

Stigma and discrimination around mental health and substance abuse problems: http://www.heretohelp.bc.ca/factsheet/stigma-and-discrimination-around-mental-health-and-substance-use-problems

70% of Parents Accept Kids With Mental Illness

It looks like American parents are more likely to accept kids with asthma than kids with mental illness.


"Many respondents did not want their children to become friends with other kids identified as having mental illnesses or have them come over to spend an evening socializing," said Jack Martin, Ph.D., lead study author.

The Indiana University research team looked at data from a national face-to-face interview of adults who were given descriptions of children of various ages with symptoms that were similar to asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression or "normal troubles." The interviewer never mentioned a specific diagnosis.

"We used asthma as a baseline condition because it represents a physical problem with a known and standard treatment," said Martin, who is executive director of the university's Karl Schuessler Institute for Social Research, in Bloomington. "We wanted to see if Americans felt differently about a child with a mental health problem."

Almost 30 percent of the 1,134 participants said they would not like their child to become friends of a child with depression, and almost one in four said the same thing about ADHD. Roughly 20 percent said they did not want a child with either ADHD or depression living next door. But when asked about friendship with children with "normal troubles" and asthma symptoms, negative responses dropped to 10 percent or less in all categories.

"[People] aren't as concerned, however, if a child with mental illness is in the same class as their child or if a child with mental illness moved into their neighborhood," Martin said. "This study suggests that a large number of Americans just don't want their kids to be spending time with other kids suffering from ADHD or depression."

The study appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.


It must be really hard for parents of a child with mental health problems to help their child make friends and be accepted by peers.

Definitely though, the good news is 70% of parents will accept a kid who is mentally ill while three in four parents will accept a kid who suffers from ADHD.

Let's just hope the 20% of parents who don't want to live next door to either kid aren't influential members of society.

Of Shame Applied Where Outside Everyone Hides While Inside I Exist Not

According to Y. Sakamoto in his “Study of the Attitude of Japanese Families of Schizophrenics Toward their Ill Members,” a Japanese family’s communication is typified by great emphasis on group-interaction and less focus on individual assertiveness (Sakamoto 370).

For a Japanese to bring shame to his family is the ultimate failure, far greater than simply bringing shame to himself. As Sakamoto points out, this cultural custom was well demonstrated by Kamikaze fighters during World War II: “The Kamikaze fighter could kill himself, not for himself, but for the society and the family, which could not tolerate the shame if he failed” (Sakamoto 372). A mentally ill member of the familial structure is a cause for disgrace, disturbing balance of this inner group.

For this reason, the psychologically disturbed try to conceal or ignore their problems.

For Japanese men especially, who may suffer from alcoholism or family/occupational pressures, admitting “weakness” and seeking treatment is unimaginable. In other cases, it can be difficult to persuade parents of the need for mental treatment for their disturbed children (Grimes 4). Or, if patients actually receive counseling, they may withhold the fact from their families.

Thus, even with successful treatments, patients’ progress may be hindered by a return to an unsympathetic and uninformed community. They may not only face prejudice from members of the outside society (referred to as soto), but also from members within their family group (referred to as uchi), who cannot bear the dishonor and humiliation reflected upon them (Hendry 43). This double discrimination from both outsiders and insiders makes coping and management only more problematic for patients. A positive public attitude towards the mentally ill is a necessary condition for satisfactory care and treatment of these patients.


Sadly though, judging from my parents' behavior, evidence of a positive public attitude towards the mentally ill is not yet prevalent in Japanese-Canadian culture.

In fact, the ignorance and lack of compassion showed towards mentally ill people shows that tradition is partly to blame for their social isolation.

It's not just the mentally ill; it's the group mentality that insists on what smells should be covered.

IMHO that smell is the smell of fear coming from Japanese society itself.