In an article today Jody Paterson writes:
Think of the creative gifts that mental illness has given us over the centuries.
Would Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf have set pen to paper in such compelling fashion if not for their mental illnesses? Would Van Gogh have painted with such passion and insight? Or Beethoven written with the same power?
Call it a sickness if you must, but the truth is that the world is a much better place for having people with mental illness in it.
I do not call it a sickness. Nor do I accept the term 'mental illness'.
So many people with 'mental illness', as diagnosed so conveniently by the mental health industry, identify themselves as nothing more than differently-abled or as ab-norm-al, where 'norm' has an ever-narrow and never-specified definition, by virtue of all that it is not.
How easy it is for governments to collude with the mental health industry and to write people off by virtue of their newly acquired labels. How convenient it is for the mental health industry to then disgorge their hordes to 'treat' the people it has so labelled with the latest fashionable 'disorder'.
Society needs people who differ from the norm. Society needs nonconformists. But what does society do instead? It pathologizes rather than embraces them and so society goes without the benefits of their sometime genius.
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7 comments:
I've heard Jody Paterson's argument before, in other places, and it always ticks me off. Has Jody Paterson ever suffered from depression, bi-polar or whatever? I bet you if she had, she'd be singing a different tune. This patronizing attitude really pisses me off.
Sure you're reading her article in the way intended?
As I read it, Paterson is pointing out that, regardless of how anyone perceives people who are different, society shouldn't be writing them off because they have been labelled with this, that or the other disorder. She is defending those deemed mentally ill, not attacking them.
I agree with the gist of her argument, but take exception to her buying into the mental health lexicon.
According to most MH 'professionals', mental illness is reaching pandemic proportions. How convenient for them! They're solely qualified to label the very disease whose treatment they also exist to provide. Those they identify as mentally ill I, in most cases, identify as nonconformist or differently-abled.
I don't see difference from the norm or nonconformity as an illness. I admire such traits, regardless of their source.
Chrystal: There is some kind of Comedy performance at the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney (BC) and connected with Mental Health Awareness.
Price of a ticket for each show is $25. That means anyone with BC Ministry "Disability" cannot afford to go!
Wondering if you might like to comment on this.?
I believe some of the comedians have dealt with their own mental health issues. Are they offering a reduced price for people with disability due to a mental health category?
Wasn't aware of the event. (Don't live near Sidney, for one thing.) But it's no surprise to me that the event price locks out those on DB or any among the di/stressed poor.
Is it a charity event? If so, part of the proceeds might be intended for the provision of 'mental health services', whatever the hell that means... Ah, here we go:
"All Festival Proceeds to go SMH (Stand Up for Mental Health) Programs, the CFB Esquimalt Military Family Resource Centre and Island Rotary Projects."
BTW, tickets aren't $25. They're $45.
Standing up for Mental Health,eh?
And..... "Are You CRAZY about Comedy"? Come and support "the Crazies"!
Only if you can afford it.
Since I'm officially "crazy" at this point I do need to point out that there are chemical factors at work, here.
That said--just as someone without legs or eyes might overcompensate or have other creative abilities and skills I find it absolutely appalling that "mental health services" spend more time on people's "weaknesses" than assisting one to compensate or use one's strengths.
Just like the poverty industry, billions are spent on conferences etc. with a few "token" cases that will spout the party line.
When Harris took Ontario and de-housed through changing tenant legislation and removing rent controls--10,000 people in the next two years didn't suddenly "go nuts" THEN become de-housed.
And the same screaming idiocy is being perpetrated. 200 people were let loose from Queen Street with "mental illnesses" when community care became the norm--yet this neighbourhood's agencies are collecting funding for THOUSANDS.
If you treat people like they're insane--they'll act like it. That doesn't denigrate the fact that there is proof of chemical imbalances, they DO exist. Been there. Done that. However, until the pharmaceutical companies bedding the psychiatrists stop playing guinea pig and INCREASING the symptoms and creating some where none existed--the situation is unlikely to improve.
MetisRebel
Yes, certain 'mental illness' is associated with certain chemical imbalances. But one problem among many is determining the causal path, especially since most of these 'chemical imbalances' remain unproven.
Among the questions: Which came first, the MI or the chemical imbalance, and what was the cause of that? And is that even a correct question? (E.g., might the relation not be either/or but more of the two operating in sync?) None of it's clearcut, although the MH industry pontificates that it is.
That aside, whether someone is labelled with a mental disorder - i.e., his/her behaviour is deemed by the 'pros' as straying from some fuzzy norm -, is a distraction, a ploy to blame the victim rather than society. After all, the further one digs into the social determinants of health, the more one understands that the root cause of individual distress in almost all its manifestations are societal ills such as poverty and childhood abuse. Mucking up our environment with pollutants doesn't help either!
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