I’ve noticed a new interest in mental illness culture. I’ ve seen things like bumper stickers that say shit like, “You’re just jealous because the voices talk to me!”, people (esp. younger people) more likely to “brag” if they’re on any medications, and a rise in the popularity of self-help books and self-diagnosis. Even some of the responses to this thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=69205 suggest that even the poster is not schizophrenic, s/he is certainly not sane, Godforbid! Why is this? Is it because self-diagnosis has become easier? Is it because of a hope of that one is not “normal”? Is it because mental illness is in the media more, and people are exposed to it?
Peronally, I’m glad I’m not insane. Mental illness runs in both sides of my family, and I am totally petrified that I may go insane.
It’s cool to be insane because the voices in my head tell me so.
I think it is just another attempt at expressing individualism.
You’re in if you’re out don’t you know.
Good question. I think, personally, this should be in GQ, but hey.
Two answers. 1, it isn’t cool. It is indeed very scary.
taking that into acount.
2. It’s about taking back something that was stigmatized and misunderstood, and making it an acceptable part of daily life. Mental Illness will be there whether we accept it and deal with it or avoid it. Better to come to grips with it, and take it as something that just adds to the rich tapestry of life. What is really wrong with being schizophrenic? really? Nothing more than being diabetic, but you don’t see diabetics stigmatized and misunderstood as much as schizophrenics. Take weirdave’s posts to that thread. It shows that a lot of education still needs to be accomplished on what mental illness is and is not.
Of course some people think it’s cool and all that because it’s edgy and different. Much the same way you see people wearing hello satan tshirtss.
I always thought some parts of our culture is like, “It’s cool to conform to non-conformity.” It’s cool to be different. Individuality is getting harder all the time.
To keep from crying.
I don’t think it’s cool to actually be insane but it’s certainly cool to pretend you are, for god knows whatever reasons. Like the “you’re only jealous because the voices talk to me” bumper stickers, the shirts labeled “mental patient” and supposed to look like actual hospital scrubs, etc.
I can’t explain it.
I think a lot of folks see being nuts as artsy or smart or delightfully colorful. Many interesting, artistic people have also been a bit loopy, and reams have been written about their roller coaster, self-destructive, technicolor adventures. Edie Sedgwick comes to mind. Sylvia Plath. Keith Moon. Brian Jones. Zelda Fitzgerald. Tennessee Williams. And on and on.
The problem is, of course, that these fabulous folks were more than likely impossible to deal with on a daily basis. Nice from a historical and literary distance, but hell to have as a family member or good buddy, ya know?
Without going into a lot of personal drivel, I’ll allow as to how I have had more than my share of quite intimate dealings with some seriously disturbed people. Yes, some of their stories are funny, out of context. And in the proper venue, they are worth telling, and I admit to having laughed at their expense. But if you stop to think about the kind of fireworks they had going on constantly in their brains, you thank God that you’re boring and “normal”.
I think it is because mental illness is losing its stigma. For so long, people had to be ashamed. Now, because of education, it is losing centuries of baggage and is becoming more understood. I don’t think it is cool, nor do the sufferers think it is cool. But, sometimes you just gotta laugh.
Cause it follows this old bumper sticker,
“WHY BE NORMAL?”
I think Creaky nailed it. How many movies have you seen with the genius mad scientist or artist cliche? I’ve seen so many that I find it quite odd now to see a movie with someone who is brilliant but otherwise a regular shmoe.
I feel compelled to point out that sanity is an ideal. No one is perfectly sane, everyone perceives reality in a slightly different way.
“All states of psychological being are but varying degrees of madness.”
-Desty Nova
Insanity, as a general term, however, is a scary concept, at least for me. Insanity describes a state in which one’s perception of reality is very different from the accepted norm. I admit that I don’t know a whole lot about psychology (some would argue I know very little about anything, but oh well).
The trend toward making light of it could be just that: a trend. Or it could imply more general acceptance of mental illness, which we all can probably agree is a good thing. It could be yet another token means of resisting what is perceived as mainstream, and thus be harmless, if a little silly (silliness may even be the point).
My humble opinion, nothing more.
I don’t think it’s necessarilly cool to be insane, I just think that it is decidedly not cool to be like everyone else. Acting insane is just another way to be different.
Without going into too much detail, I can tell you from personal experience that having a psychotic episode (nervous breakdown isn’t the term of choice anymore)is about the most uncool thing that can happen to you. The worst part is the total loss of self - you aren’t “you” anymore. Scary, scary, scary stuff.
(…and I should try to give you a reasonable answer as one of the people who tends to express that kind of sentiment)
The confluence of several factors, I think. First, a trio of reasons why you might hear some of that from people who have, themselves, received a psychiatric diagnosis:
€ Black humor, as several posters have said. My friend Laura, initially referring to food and diet (i.e., vegetarianism), asked “Are you a ‘veg’?”, then rather wickedly went on to say that if you weren’t, you could take a few psych drugs and become one on short notice.
€ I know that there a great many totally miserable and unhappy people who have received a psychiatric diagnosis from medically trained personnel attempting to help them. But please understand that there are also a great many people who were rendered miserable and unhappy as a result of having received a psychiatric diagnosis from medically trained personnel attempting to help them but doing (in our experience) a hell of a lot more harm than good; and also, a great many people who were rendered miserable and unhappy by medically trained personnel who were pretty damned blatantly trying only to coerce the patient into making a change in life choices. To those of us for whom these are our experiences with the mental health system, “mentallly ill” is a label that got stuck on WHO AND HOW WE ARE, which WE did not agree constituted a problem, following which that label was used to justify some rather shitty things that were done to us. So, yeah, our reaction has often been a radical revalorization of the differences for which we were subjected to all of this, in other words “I’m schizophrenic (can prove it, I’ve got the bloody diagnosis written on my incarceration papers) and I like being schizophrenic and I have the right to remain schizophrenic and untreated so fuck off.” And other variations on that theme.
€ Another pattern of attitude and belief among those who were subjected to psychiatric treatment without their consent is that, if they could get away with saying WE are mentally ill and then subjecting us to those treatments against our will, either there is no such thing as mental illness or they can’t recognize it and diagnose it with enough accuracy to be allowed to act on that diagnoses with the authority that they currently possess. But if you scream about what the doctors did to you while insisting that oh no, you AREN’T mentally ill, people smile in the wrong way and nod and glance at each other knowingly when you describe forced treatment on the locked ward. So even though they don’t believe they are schizophrenic, mentally ill, or in any other way intrinsically different from people who haven’t been diagnosed and locked up and subjected to forced treatment, they seize the label that has been thrust upon them and wear it proudly. Note that this is different from the pattern in the paragraph above it, where the people wearing the label believe there is a meaningful difference of some sort, but they like who they are.
…AND FROM THE GENERAL POPULATION…
€ People who are not mentally ill, never been diagnosed mentally ill, and know little about the mental health system or psychiatric theory and practice often conceptualize “insane” and “crazy” simply as “thinking differently” and/or “acting and feeling without social restraint”. Their valorization of “insane” or “crazy” is therefore a way of casting aspersions on the quality of our social norms, a way of saying “the way I’m supposed to think and believe and behave really sucks”. Most of them are not very serious about harboring a rejection of these norms, though.
€ Some are and do, however. And they are not as wrong as you may think. Rejecting belief systems that people in general share and expect each other to share, and embracing others, does two things to you — it makes you different, and therefore unpredictable, and may also make the behavior and attitudes of more typical people hard for you to understand as well; and, over time, it means that atypical beliefs and values that you embraced as real and valid can become the axiomatic foundation for yet further beliefs, values, conclusions, decisions, and so on, much as more normative beliefs and values of more normal people are built upon by them, but while the normal person has other normal people to check and compare these additional conclusions and so on with – thereby often discarding the ones that don’t really seem to follow – the unorthodox thinking / feeling person is more isolated and usually can’t get that “second opinion” from anyone who shared the same axiomatic beginning point, meaning that their thoughts and beliefs are more likely to slip into muddled self-inconsistency. And THAT can, often does, and quite likely WILL obtain for you a psychiatric diagnosis and a brief stay in a facility with locks on the doors and bars in the windows + the delightful experience of having your mental differences defined as a disease, and their content meaningless except as the static of misbehaving neurons. (As to what extent built-in biological differences do or do not make in leading a person to that state of isolated mind and feeling, neither I nor the psychiatric establishment can really say).
Allan Hunter
http://members.aol.com/ahunter3
…I’m glad this thread is currently residing in IMHO, because a lot of what I’m gonna say is based off of just my experiences. I’m obsessive-compulsive, with chronic depression and severe insomnia to boot. I don’t really think it’s cool per se to be that way, but I WILL confess to having been relieved when I was diagnosed. Just to be able to have a name that I could associate with all the strange thoughts floating around my head meant a great deal to me (I once spent the better part of a week mentally drawing blueprints of what would happen if I jabbed a needle in my eye, and I had NO IDEA of why I was thinking of it). IMHO, it’s not so much of me bragging if I tell people about it. It’s very cathartic, though. I mean, it’s important for me to share this with people. In the relationships I’ve had since I was diagnosed, I made sure that the girls were well aware of what may sometimes be a cause of my constant worrying about what other people may consider insignificant matters. It’s not that I WANT to be this way. But I am. And people have to understand that. I try to make light of it by cracking jokes. I’ve been known to say about other things that it’s either laugh or go crazy. I still subscribe to that. I’d always been a little different, but these things weren’t really brought to the surface until my mother tried to kill herself many years ago. It was right after my parents divorced, and I was at the onset of puberty. Caused me a lot of emotional problems, and stunted my emotional growth quite a bit at the time. I had a hard time adjusting to the little changes that most people take for granted. The transition from junior high to high school damn near killed me. The whole time, I was also suffering from these thoughts that most people would consider abnormal. When I found out about three years ago what was causing it all, it was like an enormous weight was lifted from me. And I made sure that my friends were all aware, because I rely on them heavily to help me with some of the machinations of day to day life (for what it’s worth, my mother recovered, went on to get her degree in nursing, and thinks that I am imagining all of these conditions that I am afflicted with. I guess she can’t comprehend the notion of something coming from inside of her being less than perfect). But, like I said before, I don’t feel that it’s “in” to be crazy (in any sense of the word). But, with me, since I’m afflicted with OCD, chronic depression, anxiety (which make a career in stand-up comedy, which I do, a very odd choice), it’s something that I have to live with, and I think that the people that I influence and that influence me should be aware of it. Not that it was greatest movie ever made, but “As Good As It Gets” portrayed some of the little things that I have to go through in a very educational light. The girl I was seeing was finally able to understand a little better exactly how some of my thought processes work.
Even though it had become a big pop culture thing, I still notice people tend stigmatize people or hold it aganist them for having mental problems. From personal experiences, I’ve had people downplay my problems, yell at me for doing things beyond my control, always being “moody”, for being “out of control”. People in school still think I’m weird for having the problems I do.
It’s a double standard. It’s only cool to have the mental stuff only if nothings wrong with you.