Apologies in Advance: Some things are hard to hear

This is how things used to be:

Why is it that the mere mention of mental illness arouses such extreme reactions?

We are freaks, outcasts, deviants.  We  arouse hostility and fear.  Unlike Bedlam today’s lunatic asylums do not attract tourists.  Nobody wanders through the wards laughing, joking, pointing at the inmates. But I  know that if they could they most certainly would. We are  protected by the thin veneer of civilisation.  But something tells me that in the years since Bedlam closed its doors, humanity hasn’t changed a bit.  The stage occupied by the mad has moved to that voyeur’s paradise: reality television.

The mentally Ill represent devastation.  Lives laid to waste by some invisible force over which we  have no control.  We do not follow the rules.  We do not obey instructions.  We are weak, we are feckless, they are helpless.  Our very presence corrupts society.  The industrious middle classes are the most hostile.  It is  not that they lack imagination.  It is not  that they are devoid of empathy.  Far from it.  They posses those qualities in abundance.  They understand more than they want to.

People are afraid because one day they know it could happen to them.  Like aerial bombardment.  No one knows who the missiles will hit next.  But they will never acknowledge that.  Not in a million years.

If you have a problem with this then please tell me why you have a problem with this. I need to hear alternative views.

 

Suicide Is Never Painless

There have been many times when I have wished that the world would stop. I wanted to put a spoke in the wheels of time. I wanted it to come screeching to a halt so that I could get off in a dignified manner, a pale, girlish foot stepping into the blackest of space. Becoming a part of it, dissolving into it, never to be seen again.

The question was: how would I get to this point? The Catholic faith does not look terribly kindly upon those who choose to commit suicide. Look to the reaction engendered by Ophelia’s death in Hamlet. It is a mortal sin with no possibility of redemption. It is self murder and once done can never be undone. You have relinquished your immortal soul.

It occurred to be that I could entice one of the more unpleasant members of my species to push me over the edge. The problem with this strategy is that it involves enticing another into committing a mortal sin. (only this time with at least some possibility of redemption.) Also having initiated the process I would be acting with suicidal intent. So, ultimately, that’s two immortal souls lost. And I cannot escape from the idea that, given that I did not create myself, I have no right to destroy myself.

Above all, I recognise that I will be remembered as a silly, spoilt, selfish girl who squandered every opportunity she had ever been given.

And this is why, for the moment at least, I want the world to keep on turning.

In Response to the Telegraph’s Latest Coverage of Mental Illness:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9847928/An-embarrassment-on-the-country-man-who-threw-bottle-at-Olympics-100m-final-during-manic-episode-escapes-prison.html

Or, more specifically, to this poster:

JacksonAliBaBa

2 days ago

People with “medical conditions” should be forced to wear high-visibility vests whenever they leave their homes. Then, the instant they start acting like twats, someone can immediately fill them in and/or hoik them off for a stint in the loony bin. For those who choose not to do so, they should be banged-up in jail. I hate the law allowing people to get off on all sorts of ridiculous technicalities.

Louise

just now

If you don’t believe that mental illness exists, my friend, then get out there and campaign for the cessation of the public funding of psychiatry.  Go on, I dare you.  Take on the generals instead of the foot soldiers.  And the protection of the mentally ill is enshrined in law.  That is why we have psychiatric hospitals and secure hospitals.  We’ve recognised that mental illness can cause people to lose control of their behaviour since the McNaughton Rule was devised.  So in 1843 the law was more compassionate to sufferers of mental illness than it is now?  I find that quite funny, in a really sick way.

By the way, you mention ‘medical conditions’ rather than mere mental illness: does this mean that you would force an elderly alzheimer’s sufferer to wear one of these ‘high-visibility vests too?

Just a taste of what some forms of mental illness can be like from the inside:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Bipolar sufferers sometimes experience auditory hallucinations too. 

The reaction to this story is truly quite horrifying.

Rage, Rage, Rage

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night, Dylan Thomas

Nobby is stoical.  He is stubborn and he can sometimes be downright awkward but he is my friend, my companion.  An unusual friendship perhaps for he his ninety two and I am in my early thirties.  I am not friends with Nobby because he is old and frail and dependent upon me for everyday care.  I am not his carer.  I am his friend. And I am not his friend because I pity him.  He is still lucid and fully in control. Some might say he is too independent for his own good.  Nobby is endlessly fascinating.  He has a bottomless pit of stories to tell.   His boyhood in the ‘thirties. His wartime experiences.  The hardship he experienced after the war.

The elderly have something to offer too.  They are living, breathing, walking history. In a society obsessed with youth it is easy to forget this. People make assumptions about the elderly.  They are ‘past it’. They have lived their lives and have no more to give.  We are wasting what could be a valuable resource and we may one day come to regret it.  Because the way in which we treat the elderly now sets a precedent for the way we will be treated in the future.  And if the way the elderly are treated now is anything to go by we should be afraid. Very afraid.  And there are two certainties in life: you either die or you grow old.  Remember that.

Topical too. Who woulda thunk it?