The Mental Patient Halloween Costume: fun in the psycho ward

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Fun World Costumes Men's Maximum Restraint Costume
by Fun World
$17.46 - $26.24
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... This mental patient costume includes a straight jacket with back ties ...
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Rubie's Costume Psycho Ward Inmate Costume
by Rubie's
$17.78 - $31.99
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... every costume occasion Whether it's for halloween, a themed ...
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Men's Mental Patient Costume by Dreamgirl
by Spook Shop
$20.99 - $39.99
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Costume colors are blue and black
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Don Post Studios Hannibal Lecter Mask
by Don Post Studios
$26.33new(6 offers)
1 out of 5 stars 2
Manufacturer recommended age: 10 Years and up
Product Features
Just add a straight jacket for an easy costume
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Adult White State Mental Patient Gown Costume
by Costume Stop
Currently unavailable
1 out of 5 stars 1
Product Features
Description: Shed All The Doubt Surrounding Your Mental Clarity
Industrial & Scientific:See all 2 items

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Adult Green State Mental Patient Gown Costume
by Costume Stop
Currently unavailable
1 out of 5 stars 1
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Description: Shed All The Doubt Surrounding Your Mental Clarity
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Blogger's Report. It seems to me that I was just about in the same place as this a year ago. This time I sincerely hoped that Amazon was no longer offering mental patient Halloween costumes, but here they are in all their horrendous glory. Horrendous because they're mocking and making fun of a suffering sector of humanity, and I don't believe any other minority group in that category would receive this kind of contemptuous treatment. Nor would it be tolerated.

But it's still OK! It's still OK because it isn't real. These aren't real people, obviously, or if they are, they are society's throw-aways and thus fair game for this kind of dehumanizing treatment. People really do think this sort of thing is funny and that there is nothing at all wrong with it: it's all good clean lighthearted fun.

Thus Fun World Costumes can offer a Men's Maximum Restraint costume with accessorizing clothing, shoes and jewelry. We have Rubie's Costume Psycho Ward Inmate Costume - and as I write this I have a certain sinking feeling that's hard to describe. The Hannibal Lecter mask, I guess considered OK because it represents a movie character, is for Age 10 Years and Up, for some reason, and there's a p. s.: "Just add a straight jacket for an easy costume." The Adult White State Mental Patient Gown Costume is tagged "shed all the doubt surrounding your mental clarity", but the green version is, unfortunately, currently unavailable.

It seems to me that right now,  mental health issues are where gay issues were in 1970. Not even peeping out of the closet yet, because most of society seems to feel that mental illness, at least mental illness requiring hospitalization, is a topic for contemptuous hilarity. They cannot even begin to imagine the shame that surrounds this subject, the sense that one is useless, worthless, even feared.

 There was a time when cancer was only whispered about, and people who had it were always described as "cancer victims". Now they're survivors, heroes, warriors, that sort of thing. But the "mental patient" is still seen as a broken-down wreck who is fair game for mockery because he or she doesn't really qualify as human.

It would be no good saying my beautiful brother Arthur died from the homelessness brought about by schizophrenia, because he didn't count either, supposedly. He counted to me, and saved me from dying from a toxic childhood. But he drifted loose, there was no help for him, and now, some 35 years later, I am sad to say that things have hardly changed at all.

When someone like Robin Williams dies of despair, we start jumping up and down and furiously telling people they should "reach out for help". I am here to tell you that in the vast majority of cases, there isn't any. What passes for help is contempt, or at very least disdain, being treated like a nuisance or a handicapped child.

I don't get into this "telling my story" stuff much except through fiction. It's boring and it puts people off. People don't care, frankly, how I fought my way back to health, so I won't tell them. The feeling is that I never should have been that way to begin with. Maybe true, but that's how it went down.

Do I sound bitter? About this, yes, I am. Not about everything. What has worked in my life has worked, and is precious to me. It has been what I needed, but seldom what I wanted. Meantime I keep seeing shit like this, and it dismays and infuriates me that it's still acceptable, or at least tolerated. There are no penalties, and year after year, there it is again.  If you object, there is a sort of bafflement, or an accusation that you have no sense of humor or are just plain oversensitive.

May I just wind up by saying that it's not helpful to refer to psychiatric facilities as "psycho wards". That's something out of a Stephen King movie. It's not helpful to dress up in an orange gown pretending to be someone who is probably in unimagineable pain and may have been completely abandoned (though I cannot imagine why). I honestly wonder if things are going to change in my lifetime: I think not, and ten years from now we'll have ever-more-mocking, insensitive portrayals of "psychos" from state hospitals, not really serious of course, oh no, all in good fun, except, hmmm, maybe you'd better not show these things to people whose loved ones have committed suicide.

I'm just sayin'.

POST-POST THOUGHTS. I had this thought about a new sort of Halloween get-up: the Cancer Victim Costume, complete with shaved head, pale makeup for gauntness, IV pole, bucket for nausea (and maybe some hilarious fake barf), scars from ineffective surgery, and then, finally, a tombstone with the victim's name on it. Would that go down well, do you think? Well, why don't you find it funny? I think it might go well with the signs that appear every year on my neighbor's front lawn: THIS WAY TO THE LUNATIC ASYLUM and DANGER! ESCAPED MENTAL PATIENT!

Gotta watch out for those crazies . . . you know?

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Let's Talk: why we need it so badly

http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/lets-talk

There's a reason I post this link today.

Though it has gotten a certain amount of coverage by the mainstream press, mostly telling lame versions of "the clown story" ("But doctor, I AM Pagliacci!"), Let's Talk (sponsored, let's not forget, by Bell) is always well down on the list, because mental health simply isn't news. The fact we're just beginning to "talk", "break the stigma", etc. (or "reduce" the stigma, as it's usually expressed) in 2015 horrifies me. The fact that we have to set aside a day for it (but only one - let's not get carried away here) is discouraging, but it's better than nothing, I suppose. But I think we still have an Amadeus-cage/snake pit/cuckoo's nest mentality, or at least scorn, contempt and mortified silence.

I don't know what I'm going to do about all this, so I'll post this excellent link to many good videos, then re-run a piece that it cost me something to write.  Will it do any good? Will anyone even see it?

Let's not "reduce" the stigma: let's throw it out!

Every day, and in every way, I am hearing a message. And it's not a bad message, in and of itself. 

It's building, in fact, in intensity and clarity, and in some ways I like to hear it.

It's about mental illness, a state I've always thought is mis-named: yes, I guess it's "mental" (though not in the same class as the epithet, "You're totally mental"), but when you call it mental illness, it's forever and always associated with and even attached to a state of illness. You're either ill or you're well; they're mutually exclusive, aren't they?

So the name itself is problematic to me. It seems to nail people into their condition. Worse than that, nobody even notices. "Mentally ill" is definitely preferable to "psycho", "nut case", "fucking lunatic", and the list goes on (and on, and on, as if it doesn't really matter what we call them). But it's still inadequate.

There's something else going on that people think is totally positive, even wonderful, showing that they're truly "tolerant" even of people who seem to dwell on the bottom rung of society. Everywhere I look, there are signs saying, "Let's reduce the stigma about mental illness."

Note they say "reduce", not banish. It's as if society realizes that getting rid of it is just beyond the realm of possibility. Let's not hope for miracles, let's settle for feeling a bit better about ourselves for not calling them awful names and excluding them from everything.

I hate stigma. I hate it because it's an ugly word, and if you juxtapose it with any other word, it makes that word ugly too. "Let's reduce the hopelessness" might be more honest. "Let's reduce the ostracism, the hostility, the contempt." "Stigma" isn't used very much any more, in fact I can't think of any other group of people it is so consistently attached to. Even awful conditions (supposedly) like alcoholism and drug abuse aren't "stigmatized" any more. Being gay isn't either. Why? Compassion and understanding are beginning to dissolve the ugly term, detach it and throw it away. 

"Let's reduce the stigma" doesn't help because it's miserable. It's the old "you don't look fat" thing (hey, who said I looked fat? Who brought the subject up?). Much could be gained by pulling the plug on this intractibly negative term. Reducing the stigma is spiritually stingy and only calls attention to the stigma.  

So what's the opposite of "stigmatized"?  Accepted, welcomed, fully employed, creative, productive, loved? Would it be such a stretch to focus our energies on these things, replacing the 'poor soul" attitude that prevails?

But so far, the stifling box of stigma remains, perhaps somewhat better than hatred or fear, but not much. Twenty years ago, a term used to appear on TV, in newspapers, everywhere, and it made me furious: "cancer victim". Anyone who had cancer was a victim, not just people who had "lost the battle" (and for some reason, we always resort to military terms to describe the course of the illness). It was standard, neutral, just a way to describe things, but then something happened, the tide turned, and energy began to flow the other way.

From something that was inevitably bound to stigma in the past, cancer came out of the closet in a big way, leading to all sorts of positive change that is still being felt. But first we had to lose terms like "victim", because they were unconsciously influencing people's attitudes. We had to begin to substitute words like "survivor" and even "warrior". 

One reinforced the other. The movement gave rise to much more positive, life-affirming, even accurate terminology. That's exactly what needs to happen here. We don't just need to "reduce the stigma": we need to CAN that term, spit on it, get rid of it once and for all, and begin to see our mental health warriors for who and what they really are. They lead the way in a daring revolution of attitudes and deeply-buried, primitive ideas, a shakeup and shakedown of prejudice that is shockingly late, and desperately needed.

Why do we need to do this so badly? We're caught and hung up on a negative, limiting word that is only keeping the culture in the dark.  I once read something in a memoir that had a profound effect on me: "Mental illness is an exaggeration of the human condition." This isn't a separate species. Don't treat it as such. It's you, times ten. It's me, in a magnifying mirror. Such projections of humanity at its finest and most problematic might just teach us something truly valuable. Why don't we want to look?

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And he glittered when he walked

Richard Cory

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

I remember that we "took" this poem in school, way back in Grade 7 or thereabouts, and the chagrin, the consternation of the class: "But why did he DO that?" "He had everything." "Everyone envied him." "It's not fair." "It's a joke, isn't it?" " That would never happen."

My "favorite" was this lovely statement, which I have heard echoed many times and from many people - I mean adults who should know better, not kids:

"You kill yourself because you're crazy, and you're only crazy if you want to be."

I wonder now, if that kid is still alive, whether he thinks the same way.

I'm not supposed to think about any of this, of course. As one writer said, Robin Williams' death caused many people to suddenly come out of the closet and proclaim, "Yes, me too". But where are they now? No doubt they have retreated in terror, hoping against hope that no one remembers their foolishness.

I've written about this before. Halloween is coming, and in the past I've seen "mental patient" costumes, often with restraints and lurid "nurses" with syringes full of "sedatives". It's funny, isn't it? Come on. Come on, don't you have a sense of humour?

No. If that's what humour is, then no.

My brother was in these "loony bins", "nut wards", etc., on and off for years. I loved him dearly, and by his own admission he was not just crazy but "ca-RAZY". Eerily, I used to compare him to Robin Williams in his madcap ability to riff on outrageous themes, putting on characters and taking them off like masks, only to change at light speed to another subject entirely. One time he did a riff on the '60s TV show The Real McCoys, doing every voice from Grandpa to Luke to Little Luke to Hassie to  Kate to - his personal favorite - Pepino. Some of it was so x-rated that we fell out of our chairs.

He died in 1980, not of suicide as almost everyone assumes, but an accident. Two months later, John Lennon was shot and killed. It was a point of despair in my life.

So what is it about people who seem to have everything, who do themselves in anyway? I think of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, relapsing most awfully into a habit he thought he had beaten. I think of Amy Winehouse drinking a gallon of vodka and poisoning herself at age 27. I think we think they are immune. Not just that they are rich and famous, but loved - aren't they loved, too, I mean by friends and family?

Are they? Is there - is there balm in Gilead?

I have already published a couple of eerily similar photos of Robin Williams with dear friends who hold him so tenderly, he looks like a baby bird fallen from the nest. I once read that people who don't feel loved are like sawdust dolls with a tiny hole in the bottom. It keeps trickling out, almost imperceptibly, until the person is desperate for more supplies to keep from bleeding out.

What got all this started again? Well, it's close to Halloween which makes me think of all those awful mental patient costumes, totally dehumanizing but seen as ghoulishly funny, and CERTAINLY not anything to be offended about.  (You're too sensitive, you know? That's your whole problem.) We don't have Parkinson's or MS or ALS Halloween costumes, but then again, these illnesses are "physical", "real", no one's fault, with the sufferers seen as dignified and courageous, and therefore not frightening or subject to mockery. After all, it would be in very poor taste. 

 It's also from remembering Williams, who seems to have died a very long time ago (but at the same time, only yesterday), but most of all it's because yesterday I bought Billy Crystal's memoir, Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys? It's typical self-deprecating Crystal humour, but not excoriating, with a sweetness, a gentleness that I have always loved about him. In fact, he is my favorite comedian.

He and Robin Williams were best friends. Closer than brothers, in many ways. This book was written and published before his suicide, but on the back is a quote from Williams that now seems poignant and unsettling: "This book is kick-ass funny and truly unique. A Hollywood autobiography with only one wife, no rehab, a loving family, and loyal friends."

I wonder if Williams secretly feared he had none of those things. It's a bit scary that he focused on that, as if to shame himself for having three wives and multiple trips to rehab.  To imply, almost, that Crystal was a superior version of himself - or, at least, not so scarred, not so vulnerable.

I don't want to go much farther into this because I don't fancy triggering off a lousy day of depression. It wouldn't do anything to change the situation. But oh how I wish people would wake up. I thought of a scenario that might have saved him - everyone has a theory, so here goes, here is mine:

He is pacing the floor, both despondent and frantic, knowing there is no way out of the crushing adversity that is coming at him from all sides. Soon he will be paralyzed from Parkinson's, his career will be over, and he won't be able to take part in the cycling that has kept him sane. Rehab did no good at all and made everything worse. He looks back with shame over the battlefield of his life, and for that moment he can't see anything good about it. At all. He has made a mess of things, and there is only one way out.

Though it is agonizing to do, though he has to stand up to an immense shame that is nearly overwhelming, he goes over to the phone, picks up the receiver, dials 9-1-1.

"Hello. I'm going to kill myself. Come get me, please. NOW."

CODA. From Leonard Bernstein's Mass. I used to carry this around written on a little piece of paper. Once a counsellor took it from me and read it in a sing-songy, Betty Crocker voice, then handed it back to me saying, "Oh, that's nice."

I don't know where to start

There are scars I could show

If I opened my heart

But how far, Lord, how far can I go?

I don't know. 

What I say I don't feel

What I feel I don't show

What I show isn't real

What is real, Lord

I don't know 

No, no, no. . . I don't know.

Stigma, stigmata: let's get rid of it, shall we?

Robin Williams and the talk of the 'stigma' of mental illness


The death of the actor has occasioned many ill-advised opinions





Elizabeth Day

The Observer, Sunday 24 August 2014
Jump to comments (195)





Flowers are placed in memory of Robin Williams on his Walk of Fame star in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/AP


When a much-loved celebrity dies in a sudden and shocking way, the immediate human desire is to find an explanation. We want to rationalise brutality. We need the reassurance. We kid ourselves that knowledge is a bulwark against falling into the same situation. If we know what caused it, the flawed reasoning goes, we can prevent it from happening again.


So it was that, in the days after Robin Williams took his life, media outlets were filled with speculation. Was it the threat of bankruptcy or career worries or a lifelong battle with addiction or a recent diagnosis of Parkinson's that made him confront the meaning of his existence?


The questions were futile. Depression is not a logical disease, a matter of straightforward cause and effect. Suicide is a devastating and complex beast. In truth, the only person capable of telling you why they did what they did has fatally absented themselves from the discussion. And sometimes, even they would be unable to pinpoint a reason.


But alongside the hopeless search for motivation, something else emerged in the aftermath of Williams's death. There was a lot of chatter surrounding the "stigma" of mental illness. Social networks were clogged with people urging others to seek help for their depression and not to feel "stigmatised" by their illness. There were magazine articles about mental health issues being "taboo" and how we must counteract this state of affairs by talking about our own struggles.


All of which is entirely admirable, but is there a stigma? The very fact that the internet was abuzz with people sharing their own stories of depression and encouraging others to do the same suggests that, thankfully, we live in a more accepting age. Most of us will know of close friends or family members who have dealt with depression. Some of us, myself included, will have experienced a form of it ourselves. Celebrities, too, have spoken out, fostering this culture of greater acceptance. The actresses Carrie Fisher and Catherine Zeta-Jones have talked about their bipolar disorders. Stephen Fry has written movingly about his depression.


As a result, I don't view mental illness as a scary, strange thing or as a form of weakness. Do you? I doubt it. And because we are talking more openly than we might have done in the past, many employers have become more attuned to dealing with it. If a workplace failed in this duty of care, there would, rightly, be outrage.


Stigma exists in other places – in the long-term care of the elderly, for instance: that unglamorous world of colostomy bags and daily drudgery we don't like to talk about because we're scared it lies ahead of us all.


There is still work to be done. An applicant for a job might feel less inclined to mention a history of mental health problems than, say, a battle with cancer. That is wrong. But bandying around the term "stigma" in reference to mental illness is unhelpful. It does precisely the opposite of what it intends to do: it means we're actually more likely to think of it in those terms because of the repeated association. Can't we just ditch the word?


What does "stigma" mean, anyway? The original definition has its roots in a Greek term that referred to the marking – by cutting or burning – of socially undesirable types such as criminals, slaves or traitors. Later, the Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman defined social stigma as "the phenomenon whereby an individual with an attribute which is deeply discredited by his/her society is rejected as a result of the attribute".


Does that apply to mental health? Increasingly, I would say the answer is no. Yes, we should keep talking about depression. Yes, we should be profoundly sensitive to those who grapple with it every day of their lives. But let's stop saying there's a stigma attached to it.


(Emphasis mine. This article echoes one of my previous posts, expressing the belief that juxtaposing the ugly, scary word "stigma" with ANY condition "marks" it in a way which reminds me of the plural of stigma - stigmata. No more bleeding wounds, eh? No more creepy supernatural manifestations, "demons" (a word people casually use to describe mental illness without ONCE stopping to think exactly what they are saying), or any of the crap that still hangs around human pain. Let's get real, use some sensible and sensitive language, and get on the path to real healing.)

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The cure for depression

 The Cure for Depression

(or: “Can’t you just. . . ?”)

NOTE. Whenever mental illness pushes its way to the public forefront, a thing we all seem to want to shove back as hard as possible, for one brief shining moment people have all sorts of good intentions about being sensitive, being compassionate, listening, etc. I am here to tell you that it is ALL BULLSHIT and that practically NO ONE practices any of it. Instead, the depressed person is bossed around, due to the non-depressed person's primal terror of their friend's perceived weakness and loss of control. When Robin Williams destroyed himself, I saw things on Facebook that made me want to howl: "Oh well, he was just a whack job anyway. It was only a matter of time." Our free use of terms like "nut job" and "whacko" reveal the horror and contempt we feel for anyone suffering from ANY form of mental illness.(At the same time, we mouth certain pre-recorded words such as, "We need to reduce the stigma around mental illness.") As with the Black Plague, we fear contagion. We'd rather put these people in the stocks in the public square and throw rotten apples at them. But since that is "uncivilized", instead we tell them "helpful" things like the following - and it is, of course, all for their own good.

“It’s all in your mind.”

“You just need to give yourself a good swift kick in the rear.”

“No one ever said life was fair.”

“I think you enjoy wallowing in it."

"Depression is a choice, you know."

“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

"There are a lot of people worse off than you.”

“But it’s a beautiful day!”

“You have so many things to be thankful for!”

“You just want attention.”

“Happiness is a choice, you know.”

"Just read this book. It'll fix you right up."

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“There is always somebody worse off than you are.”

“You should get off all those pills.”

“You are what you think you are.”

“Cheer up!”

“Have you been praying/reading your Bible?”

"People who meditate don't get depressed."

“You need to get out more.”

"Don't you have a sense of humour?"

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

“Get a job!”

“Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone.”

"Just read this book. It'll fix you right up."

“But you don’t look depressed. You seem fine to me.”

“You can do anything you want if you just set your mind to it.”

“Snap out of it, will you? You  have no reason to feel this way.”

“I wish I had the luxury of being depressed.”

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

"Just read this book. It'll fix you right up."

"Do you want your family to suffer along with you?"

“Can't you at least make an effort?"

“Believe me, I know exactly how you feel. I was depressed once for several 

days.”

“Turn it over to your Higher Power.”

“I think your depression is a way of punishing us.”

“So, you’re depressed. Aren’t you always?”

“You’re always so negative! Look on the bright side.”

“What you need is some real tragedy in your life to give you perspective.”

“You’re a writer, aren’t you? Just think of all the good material you’re getting 

out of this.”

“Have you tried camomile tea?”

"I TOLD you to read that book."

“Go out and help someone who is worse off than you and you won’t have time

 to brood.”

“You have to take up your bed and carry on.”

“Well, we all have our crosses to bear.”

"I was depressed until I tried yoga."

“You don’t like feeling that way? Change it!"

“SMILE!”

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