I’ve googled around and can’t pin down exactly where I get this impression, but it seems to me that decades ago and earlier, there was a popular idea that people who were “insane” were somehow happy (in an insane sort of way, of course). In cartoons I’ve seen characters driven off the deep end who suddenly start wearing a Napolean-style hat and have their eyes go all googly and their tongue jutting out to one side, laughing hysterically. I also remember reading in some self-help books of the era (eg Dale Carnegie) that some people seemed to be better off “insane”, that they were living in a world of pink fluffy clouds far better than the squalor of their actual lives if they ever came back to face it.
So was this the common perception of mentally disturbed people in the past? Where did it come from? Is there any truth to it?
There’s the laughing-mad hare and hatter in Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass. I think it’s a fairly long-standing trope, but well-established.
From the 1950 Jimmy Stewart movie, Harvey:
The Taxi Driver (referring to the procedure done at a mental institution):
…I’ve been driving this route for 15 years. I’ve brought 'em out here to get that stuff, and I’ve drove ‘em home after they had it. It changes them… On the way out here, they sit back and enjoy the ride. They talk to me; sometimes we stop and watch the sunsets, and look at the birds flyin’. Sometimes we stop and watch the birds when there ain’t no birds. And look at the sunsets when its raining. We have a swell time. And I always get a big tip. But afterwards, oh oh… [t]hey crab, crab, crab. They yell at me. Watch the lights. Watch the brakes, Watch the intersections. They scream at me to hurry. They got no faith in me, or my buggy. Yet, it’s the same cab, the same driver. and we’re going back over the very same road. It’s no fun. And no tips… After this he’ll be a perfectly normal human being. And you know what stinkers they are!
Yes, there are some who are probably happier that way. “Fixing” a mentally ill person is a long, intense and invasive program. Some people aren’t happy with that intensity, being prodded (both through therapy and medical intervention), medicated, etc. and they become angry, unhappy, frustrated.
Now, mental illness is a severe and debilitating family of diseases. While there are some who are probably happy the way they are, the most are not. Schizophrenics, depressives, those with psychotic and eating disorders (to name a few) are generally very unhappy with their lives. Each person, each disease is different… there really is no stereotypical “crazy person.”
Popular recognition of depression as a bona fide mental illness is fairly recent, like within my lifetime. Before that, it was considered a fact of life that you would be sad and depressed occasionally and you just dealt with it. “Mental illness”, if the word was even used, meant something like “raving, maniacal lunacy”. Anything less than that was just being eccentric, ‘down in the dumps’ or having ‘the blues’.
To be clear, I’m talking about my impression of popular culture, here. Psychologists were probably at least a generation ahead of the game.
Bipolar (manic-depressive) people are notorious for going off their meds to get manic symptoms back. I never could stand it myself because mania causes too much damage but it is a type of high. It is the only mental illness that I can think of with some benefits.
I think there is a huge difference between people who develop a mental illness later in life and people who are born mentally retarded. The few who I know that have been like that all their life seem very happy. I think this is because they are not caught up in the rat race that the rest of us are, and don’t spend their days trying to conform to what society says we are supposed to be.
To at least some extent, it’s assholes like me who are responsible for it.
The default assumption of the olden days was that your garden-variety lunatic was that way due to moral corruption of some sort; the default assumption of the modern era is that the mentally ill are afflicted with neurochemical disorders. In both cases, it is assumed to be so obvious as to not require mention that one is unfortunate if one is like that, and that normal everyday people are much better off.
There have always been some proud nuts around, though, who have said, in essence, “Thanks but no thanks, I would rather be as I am. In fact, I think I’d rather be as I am than be like you, all things considered. Please go away.”
Hence, the attribution “insane and happily so”. Many of us with that opinion of the validity of psychiatric treatments available through the ages, and even with that opinion of the average rabble of normal folk, have nevertheless not been happy people, certainly seldom carefree people; we’ve just indicated (often to well-intentioned interfering busybodies) that they should leave us the fuck alone and quit trying to “help”.
For one thing, mental retardation is not a mental illness. It’s usually either a genetic defect (Downs syndrome, Phenylketonuria, Fragile X Syndrome, etc.) or the result of fetal alcohol poisoning.
I’d like to expand on this even more to say that there was a realization that many people diagnosed with depression had a physiological illness – specifically a chemical imbalance – and were not simply being sad and/or unhappy. Sadness and unhappiness continue to part of the normal ups and downs of life. When your brain doesn’t produce serotonin or dopamine, that’s a whole different scenario.
There are many mental illnesses, or symptoms thereof, characterized by excessive happiness and other intense emotions. Mania is one which has already been mentioned. Another is hebephrenia, which is often marked by inappropriate facial expressions, “silly” behaviour, and inappropriate laughter. It may also be accompanied by delusions and hallucinations.
I’ve never actually met someone who had been diagnosed as a hebephrenic. That one would be quite the conversation piece at Mental Patients’ Liberation Front meetings!
Yeah, but notions like what the OP are talking about are from when convulsions were called St Vitus’ dance… someone who burst laughing at a funeral out of nerves (or because the defunct relative was a bastich whose death came as a relief) was seen as mad, people made no distinction between “unable to speak” and “unable to reason”, etc.
Is that true, though? If Wikipedia is to be trusted, it looks like Saint Vitus Dance is associated with a specific disease that’s been identified for hundreds of years now.
Likewise, I kind of doubt that inability to speak by itself was equated with an inability to reason, even though they were both described with the term “dumb”. Our grandparents and great-grandparents may have had a less sophisticated awareness of mental health issues, but we’re not talking about an era where they were burning witches or what not.
I don’t think this has much to do with what I was talking about in the OP. “Leave me the fuck alone!” is different than “Hoo hoo hoo! Look at the birdies! I’m Napoleon!” that I’m picturing as a stereotype.
Wait, why not? I understand that it’s not a “mental illness” in terms sanity / insanity, but why not a mental illness? It affects the mind, and it’s certainly not the healthy normal state. Both depression and mental retardation affect the ability to think, albeit in very, very different ways. I am asking out of ignorance. Is it that one group doesn’t want the other’s stigma? Is it because the treatments (therapy, medication, education, etc.) are so radically different that it’s simply not useful to consider them together?
I think AHunter’s point is that your OP issues from an antiquated idea of “mental illness.” For instance, there is a good deal of patronizing in the statement that they are “living in a world of pink fluffy clouds far better than the squalor of their actual lives if they ever came back to face it.” I don’t say that you have adopted these beliefs, but they come from a power relation already discussed heatedly and at length in the several schizophrenia threads of a couple weeks ago.
The postmodernist in me would mention that these cartoons are part of the media ecology dealing with mental illness and observe that the idea of the mentally ill as eternal children in our society is inculcated via the teevee from a young age.
Which brings me to my point: Was Caligula considered insane in his own time, or was he considered a monster? The difference is that an insane person is ill and, therefore, it is incumbent on society to care for them (badly, in the case of Bedlam, but the concept of care was present even then), whereas a monster exists merely to be slain by whoever can do so. Elizabeth Bathory and Sawney Bean were both monsters; Aileen Wuornos and Ed Gein are (or were) both mentally ill.
So that could be an answer: Back before the concept of treatment, those who weren’t ignored entirely were either fools (conflating mental illness with mental retardation) or monsters (not entirely human).
My understanding is that the words sane and insane are most often used as legal definitions appraising mental health. A court may find you to be “sane” – able to make sound judgments about the consequences of your actions or “insane” – unable to comprehend the consequences of your actions.
I can be mentally ill without being insane. I can be schizophrenic without requiring that I be treated as a patient or a dependent person. I can be depressed without being mentally ill. Anyone can be depressed, sad, or blue. But if I have depression, then I have an illness and that is very different from just being sad.
Sometimes people who have depression are beyond feeling sad. They feel numb or empty or out of reach. They may feel hopeless. They may have trouble concentrating or have a sense of unreality. They may feel guilty. They may have a sudden weight gain or weight loss. They may have trouble sleeping or they may sleep all the time. They may lose interest in everything that used to interest them. They may withdraw from friends. They may have no energy at all. Their judgment may be impaired. They may be suicidal. They may have no idea at all that they have depression and are in need of help. That’s what happens when the brain is sick and the brain is the thing making decisions about itself.
If you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps or talk yourself out of it, it’s not mental illness. It’s not a matter of attitude. It’s not your fault. It’s not a matter of character weakness.
There are things that you can do to make yourself feel better though. Exercise – if you can bring yourself to do it – can help. Creativity can help. Medication and therapy can help. Sometimes just therapy with a counselor can help. Sometimes just the medication is all that is needed.
