Why I hate "mental health"

 

I hate buzzwords and fads, and they exist in every single area of human endeavour. The one I hear repeatedly now is "mental health". But what does it mean? Scratch a little deeper, and it usually refers to a celebrity or public figure "admitting" he or she experienced depression, but always in the deep past, at a safe distance.

Anxiety is big these days - it always has been - but it's just what folks get when things are this bad, hard-wired into our brain evolution. But what about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and - the big, bad boogeyman of "mental health" - PSYCHOSIS?

One day I tried to count the number of times I heard or read terms meaning "crazy", and I stopped after fifteen. It includes nut case, whack job, cracked, batshit crazy, psycho, and on and on (I don't even need to tell you, do I?), with facilities to house these undesirables called the nut house, the booby hatch, the funny farm, the whatever. 

Want to know what Merriam-Webster's dictionary has to say? I've copied and pasted all the synonyms, verbatim. Buckle in.

Insane

as in psychotic

having or showing a very abnormal or sick state of mind 

"only an insane person would intentionally jump off a skyscraper"

Synonyms & Similar Words

psychotic 

lunatic
mad
nuts
crazy
maniacal
maniac
mental
gaga
paranoid
crazed
psycho
paranoidal
deranged
looney
whacky
disturbed
demented
strange
irrational
unhinged
loony
whacko
nutty
unbalanced
cuckoo
wacko
screwy
eccentric
certifiable
wacky
ballistic
batty
bonkers
cracked
bedlam
daft
unreasonable
around the bend

haywire
kooky
foolish
odd
barmy
depressed
daffy
loony tunes
obsessed
crackbrained
bughouse
meshuga
out to lunch
moonstruck
loco
crackpot
unsound
scatty
non compos mentis
brainsick
kookie
hysteric
bats
meshuggah
frantic
looney tunes
distraught
meshugah
hysterical
distracted
schizophrenic
balmy
meshugge
delusional
fruity
off
wud
paranoic
neurotic
delirious
cranky
loopy
fey
sociopathic
schizoid
out of one's mind
off one's rocker
obsessive-compulsive
paranoiac
delusionary
off one's gourd
crackers
queer
disordered
off one's head
oddball

aberrant
tetched
out of one's head
nuclear
touched
dotty
berserk
witless
pixillated
pixilated
amuck
raving
senseless
monomaniacal
frenzied
potty
teched
ape
amok
wigged-out
monomaniac
fixated
bananas

These nasty epithets have INCREASED in the past couple of years, and I sense that public contempt for "crazies" has grown exponentially. At the same time, every day and in every way, we hear the term bandied about: mental health, mental health, mental health. I suspect there is considerable schadenfreude involved, in that people love to watch other people's crises. It's a great spectator sport. And it's almost (but not quite) a badge of honour now for a celebrity to take a little break from their multi-billion-dollar career to "work on their mental health".

But they don't know what they are talking about. 

These people who so delicately refer to "mental health" know nothing at all of the real deal, how it can be life-threatening, and how it can take every fibre of your being to put your life back together after an "episode". The confusion and the lurching moods, the baffled and frightened loved ones, the endless trials on medications that seem to make matters worse - but this is only part of the story.

I don't know how many times I've been in psychiatric wards, because I don't remember those horrendous passages in my life very well, nor do I wish to. But there were no cards, no flowers, and most definitely, no visitors. Who would want to go there? Or did they just assume someone in that "state" did not want or require visitors? The people around me just pretended it hadn't happened, or told people I was "away".

No doubt if I'd had my tonsils out, it would have been a different story. But it's obvious that something as horrendous as a  tonsillectomy would require sweet gifts and cards and visits, whereas that other thing - well - 

I remember sitting in a women's group in which we were encouraged to "share" some particularly vulnerable experiences in our lives. I made the huge mistake of saying I had recently been in the hospital, and as I talked, I noticed the woman sitting next to me was acting as if she had suddenly developed an all-over body rash. Then she said, "I'm sorry", got up from the chair and moved away from me. She apologized profusely, saying "I'm sorry, I just can't hear stories about the psycho ward." No one objected, and the group went on talking, though the temperature of the room had dipped slightly.

I've heard people blow off "psychos" with such utter contempt that I have been tempted to grab them by the collar and say, "Look into my eyes. You are talking about ME." Not only that, it might be YOUR closest, dearest loved one, or even YOURSELF who may be next to bear that label of utter disgrace and contempt. 

There is no disgrace in a condition which has been part of humanity forever, and which is poorly-understood at best, even by professionals. Why people are now pretending so hard to understand it, or at least pretend to be more compassionate about it, is beyond me. I guess it's better than nothing - but not much. Maybe it's just an updated version of "thoughts and prayers", 

I say fuck the genteel, sanitized label of "mental health", particularly to display how compassionate and enlightened you are, and instead STOP referring to whack jobs and nut bars and try to see human beings as human beings. Is that such a tall order?

AAAAAND, just for reference, here are the ANTONYMS of "insane" from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

sane

reasonable

sound

balanced

rational

clear

normal

wise

sensible

lucid

uncrazy

judicious

compos mentis

healthy

well-adjusted

unneurotic

Doesn't quite match up. Does it?

POST-BLOG THOUGHTS. I wrote this post several years ago, and if anything, it's even more true now. I believe you can still order "mental patient costumes" online for Halloween, and in my very own neighborhood, I've seen lawn decorations that said things like "DANGER! ESCAPED MENTAL PATIENT" (or looney or whack job or whatever the epithet of the day is). "The Mentally Ill" (a separate species, apparently) are still the stuff of horror, violence, and dread. The more extreme depictions in pop culture are virtually indistinguishable from that other celebrated cultural icon, the zombie.

That means I'd better join the club, or grab a club or something, and start stalking the neighborhood. But I will ONLY pursue people who spew the meaningless term "mental health" left, right and centre - because everyone else is saying it now. It's just the thing to say.

How can you be "ill" and "well" at the same time? You can't

Something has happened in very recent times. Media are now referring to "mental health issues" rather than "mental illness". I used to wonder: how can you be "ill" and "well" at the same time? Basically, you can't. The labelling was problematic and very stigmatizing. Years ago, we spoke of "cancer victims", even if the person was still alive and recovering. That dire label was dumped at some point for words like "survivor" and "warrior". Language DOES affect the way we think, more than we consciously know. It is somewhat more palatable to say "I have mental health issues" rather than "I am mentally ill". It's supposed to mean the same thing, isn't it? If not, why not? But how miserable that second one is, locking a person into a category of lifelong illness with no possibility of parole.

Surgery without anaesthetic? It happened to me

This was going to be tacked on to my last post  about my hatred and dread of doctors,  but it  began to spill out of me dreadfully today and I couldn't make it stop. I just hope I don't lose followers, as I did last  time I expressed anything really painful.  Only celebrities can "admit" to  traumatic experiences like this and get a readership spike. The rest of us, apparently, get the opposite.

On Monday night I got a call, out of the blue, during supper, that I had to have a "consultation  with a surgeon" (?) on WEDNESDAY, and to do my "cleanout" tomorrow. Cleanout? Oh yes, for the colonoscopy. (But nobody told me I had to -) Which  was on Wednesday, the day after tomorrow - two days, what, what?  - followed by "the surgery". I was completely unable to take any of this in, because it was said by a receptionist who talked very very  fast and was obviously at the end of her shift. When I began to ask desperate questions, the putdown vocal tone and "calm down now!" attitude immediately kicked in. Only when I asked her for clarification did she email me colonoscopy "prep" notes, but nothing more, except a  time and place.

The prep is better not talked about, not something for family viewing anyway, but it left me in a lot of pain in a very vulnerable area. In the hospital I was "prepped" for the procedure by a mechanically cheery nurse whom I heard say the exact same things to patients on the other side of the hospital curtain. The "surgeon", whom I had never met in my life before and whom I could not see because they had taken my glasses away, rattled on about "if I can do the procedure" (If?. . .  Procedure?), then I was pushed into the next room. I was hooked up to an IV, so I assumed it would  be like the last time I had one of these: I'd lie on my side, they'd turn on the juice, and it would be "bye-bye- land" until it was done.

Except.

There was none. 

No. None. NO ANAESTHETIC for the colonoscopy - I was awake and conscious for the entire 45-minute thing, which was like being  assaulted by a roto-rooter. At one point I began screaming - the pain was approaching the level of childbirth as the probe with the camera on the end punched and twisted and jabbed at the turns and folds inside my colon, and the nurse kept on telling me to keep quiet because I was disturbing the other patients. I asked why I was awake,  and I was told, in  a slightly indulgent, sighing tone, "Dr. So-and-so doubled the dose of pain medication," no doubt a ploy to get me to subside because I was making too much of a fuss. In other words, if you've had all that pain medication, you can't have any pain, so what are you complaining about?  But I was awake, and in extreme pain, and no one would explain anything to me as to WHY this needed to happen.  Nor was there any sense of apology for hurting me. Getting someone to listen was impossible.

After the "procedure", everyone rapidly exited the room and left me completely alone. No one asked me how I was doing (horrible) or if it still hurt (which it did, a lot, though today it is MUCH worse and at least a 7 or 8 out of 10). Nobody said anything at all because there was no one there. They just left, with no explanation of anything they had done, or why. Then my husband took me home. I was too dazed even to cry, although I don't remember feeling  this deeply violated in many, many years.

When my husband recently had his prostate surgery, he was treated like a king. His urologist spent 45 minutes with him carefully explaining what they were going to be doing (and he had several weeks of lead  time  to prepare himself emotionally). He was given a FIFTY-PAGE document to read outlining the procedure, including every conceivable outcome from best to worst, so he wouldn't have to face any surprises. The feeling was that "men feel awfully vulnerable about things like this, it's their manhood after all, so they need lots of reassurance," which he got - in spades, from the family as well as the medical support team.

After the surgery, he spent the night in a quiet, beautiful room that even had a restful view. I remember him telling me the food was great. When he got home the next day, the entire family pitched in to help, and there were many solicitous emails flying  back and forth - and they are STILL constantly asking him how he is, weeks later, though his recovery was textbook, he experienced no pain at all (he was given an epidural, which means he felt nothing below the waist), and is back to normal now. While I can't sit down because of the inflamed, toothachey sensation in my unmentionable parts, and keep getting waves of uncontrollable, deep shuddering that I know is the awakening of a very old trauma.

I am an older woman, I have had  psychiatric and addiction problems in the past, and I was deeply violated, including sexually violated, in the hospital system over and over again, but whenever I express the view that the medical community treats me with dismissal or even contempt because of that bottom-of-the-barrel status, I am met with eye-rolls, sighs and shaking heads (followed by walking away). How on earth could I even THINK this would affect the professionalism of the medical community, which is always completely impartial and  treats everyone with equal respect?

One doctor I had seen for fifteen years insisted that the medical community had nothing to do with my perception of mistreatment and that I "stigmatize myself". Doctors "would never" do anything so harmful to anyone, and "people like me" are never treated any differently, they're really quite tolerant of those kinds of things, so I had better "work on my attitude".

Apparently, nothing can or will be done about this, because in their minds,  nothing happened.  It's done, and I am in extreme pain. I can't talk about it either, it's too embarrassing and no one is interested, and even writing this now is a risk. I don't feel good about it, but I ask myself why I even write, if I must censor myself so carefully about things that affect me so profoundly. 

I know that nerve damage, which is what this feels like, may well be permanent. Doing a colonoscopy without anaesthetic means the body is tense, the muscles are tight, and the pain made me involuntarily thrash, though I could  vaguely see (without my glasses) two figures holding me down, one on either side, while she "did it". I could NOT "just hold still, it'll be over in a minute", said to me in exasperated  "we've got another one" end-of-shift tones. The best image I could conjure up was of a bad dog at the vet.

I was only to find out later that there was also a surgical procedure done, surgery without anaesthetic, because it was easier for her to do this (and FASTER - I think the main thing was that she could get out of there quickly) while I was fully conscious. I kept thinking of the dentist's scene in The Boys from Brazil, and I keep wondering - some dark, hidden, wounded part of me keeps wondering - why? Well, why did ANY of it happen anyway, my past which apparently cemented me into  a marginalized, silenced, powerless category from which there is no escape except death?

And why the sighing, the eye-rolling, the "we've got another one" attitude when I screamed out in pain? I don't remember pain like  that, ever, except perhaps in childbirth, or being sexually  assaulted over and over which also happened - but we don't write  about that, do we, or  express it, you must just keep it to yourself because it's "not nice", it's "nasty", I'm meant to deal with it like a mature person on my own, and besides, it "probably didn't happen anyway".

But this did.

This. Did.

Mental illness: Let's NOT reduce the stigma!

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?

We don't speak of diabetic illness. We don't speak of Parkinsonian illness. We don't speak of - you get the idea. Although these are chronic, ongoing disease conditions, we use different language to describe them that does not imply the person cannot be well.

Why should this matter? It's only a name, isn't - it doesn't change anything, does it?

I beg to differ. The name "mental illness" itself is problematic to me. It seems to nail people into their condition. Worse than that, nobody even notices. I have never in my life heard anyone mention it, because in the public consciousness, it does not exist. In fact, "mentally ill" is a compassionate term (so they say), if leaning towards pity and tinged with dread. But it is is definitely preferable to "psycho", "nut case", "whack job", "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 (hey, we're really helping the cause!) for not calling them awful names and excluding them from everything.





(Caption: To put yourself in another's shoes, you gotta first unlace your own.)

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 or thirty 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 most problematic might just teach us something truly valuable. Why don't we want to look?

POST-BLOG. I ran this one two years ago on Let's Talk Day. Because it got twelve views, I thought I would run it again. I am not sure why I continue with this, except that it seems to satisfy some need in me. But when I try to put the message "out there", I find there is no "out there". The internet is all about numbers, totals, likes, views, and popularity, a thing I cannot bear because I thought I left the high school mentality behind a long time ago. So I do this for the only reason that matters to me: because I want to.

DON'T check your views!

After re-reading some of my recent posts, I am sorry for, or at least a little embarrassed about, writing the same piece three or four times. I am referring, of course, to the recent CanLit debacle, starring Steven Galloway in the Randle P. McMurphy role.  I had thought of deleting one or two, but each one emphasizes a certain aspect. .  . so. . . ah. . . I was surprised to see it, anyway. Each time I wrote, it seemed like the first time. This may be a sign of advancing age and a brain that sometimes seems as arthritic as my ghastly old knuckles. 

Once I've written and posted things, I try to forget about them. I know that is not the best attitude, but it is my personal antidote to the feverish "OMG-I'm-not-getting-enough-views/likes/hits/kisses/love" that seems to be a requirement of bloggitude and the internet-verse in general. Lately I have been trying assiduously NOT (t-t-t-t-t-tttt) to check my blog views, simply because a few weeks ago they shot up by several hundred per post for no reason I could ascertain. Certainly I wasn't writing any better. Most of the views were for the kind of silly video I like to post, both to lighten things up and because I really do think they're cool. But some were for actual pieces of writing that I did. I was not used to this and almost panicked. Wait a minute! Is somebody trying to read my stuff?

I've never had what could be called a "readership", though at one point I was as anxious as anyone else who writes and tries to publish.  I'm of the opinion now that I should write whatever the hell suits, pleases and is personally therapeutic for ME and just put it out there. One person may read it, or none. My new YouTube enterprise is even more shocking: the only reason I get one view is that there is no "zero" setting, but was it ever any different? ("Those whose names were never called/When choosing sides for basketball" - Janis Ian, "At Seventeen").

At any rate, I don't want to write about CanLit any more, don't want to see people tearing into each other in public from the anonymous safety of their phone. Used to be, if you hated someone or were furious with them, you found a piece of paper, stuck it in your typewriter (or found a pen), spilled out your enraged thoughts in the letter, then folded it, addressed it, found a stamp (if you could find one - hell, I could never find a PEN!), then went outside (outside! THAT place), and started walking (!) to the mail box.

While it was true you couldn't take it back once it went thunk into the mailbox, that stroll might give you time to think better of it. Writers and people in general were usually advised to leave such a letter overnight, sleep on it. 

Whoever the hell sleeps on ANYTHING any more? And we all weigh 300 pounds and are more neurotic about power and popularity than ever.

Reduce the stigma? How about the stupidity?

Like most writers in these parts, I’ve already written about the current Big Issue in CanLit, and don’t want to recap it. This is a side issue – maybe – but it’s an important one that, to my knowledge, no one else has touched on.

It's unpalatable to me to read about someone being “arrested”, “incarcerated”, subjected to a “Gestapo-style arrest”, and “thrown in a mental hospital” (all phrases I’ve read on Facebook), when to my knowledge this person was taken to a psychiatric facility for his own protection. It happened because according to two of his colleagues (now being horribly demonized by some), he was in danger of committing suicide. My understanding is that a person in this position is not “incarcerated” but under 24-hour observation only and can sign themselves out at that point.

I wasn’t there, of course, but the people making these provocative and alarming statements were not there either. Yet they report on it as if they were, in some cases even “naming names” about people who WERE there and blaming/shaming them for the incident, as if they caused it or at least allowed it to happen. 

The narrative has degradation/humiliation as its main theme. Being called "crazy" is still the worst, most career-destroying epithet of all - especially when, of course, you actually aren't but have been tarred-and-feathered with the same awful brush. I get the sense of people pointing at some dungeon of the soul and claiming that he certainly did not belong with THOSE people, who were being medicated to the gills and given ECT without their consent.

This is not 1962. He is not Jack Nicholson being shocked and lobotomized. And this is a stupid, stupid way to try to create sympathy for someone who, in my opinion, does not deserve it.

The implication of “incarceration” is alarming, because it implies punishment via imprisonment in the “madhouse” (a la Solzhenitsyn, a martyring rhetoric). It also displays the shame, horror and stigma STILL associated with psychiatric illness or even the suggestion of it, and portrays a scenario of a sane man being “committed” and dragged away in irons, kicking and screaming about his rights.

Did that happen? I don’t know. Though it does not seem likely, it’s being reported that way. At very least, it is being suggested by provocative terminology that smacks of "well, she told me" - "then HE told ME -" whispering around the campfire circle, the story amplified and distorted with each telling. As with campfire stories, ancient terrors usually pushed to the back of the mind begin to emerge, and the story takes on a life of its own.

Who better to invent stories (especially about the horrors of the madhouse, a favorite topic in fiction) than a whole bunch of pissed-off writers? What better medium than the Twitterverse, that strange otherworld of verbal hit-and-run? Stories and counterstories, letters and counterletters swarm around, and there is a virtually audible sense of heartbreak. 

Atwood's deliberate use of the phrase "witch hunt" (please forgive the Salem ads, they were left over from my last post) is a direct stab at the credibility of the complainants. Surely these claims were groundless, or at least blown far out of proportion: really, "not that bad", only what any attractive young woman should expect to experience with a charismatic, hip prof (and maybe even an advantage, come to think of it - why aren't these women more grateful?).

It's almost universal for abusers in positions of power to reverse the dynamics when under attack, suddenly flip-flopping into victim mode to gain professional and public sympathy: in which case, the dragged-off-in-chains scenario would only help. (If he were actually mentally ill, of course, it would be a whole 'nother story: he wouldn't know what he was talking about). It's obvious that the "victim" has tons of powerful supporters, a virtual Who's Who of CanLit - though some are apparently beginning to think better of it. Meanwhile, people post and tweet "at" each other. I have even seen Facebook posts in all-caps, displaying far more fulminating fury than that notorious “other side” who can’t seem to shut up about powerlessness. 

It's a kind of civil war among people usually exalted for their intelligence, insight and sensitivity.

Can’t we do better than that? This is 2016. I don’t know what happened there, YOU don’t know what happened there, but let’s dispense with this awful “thrown in the loony bin” rhetoric. The fact that people still think that way makes me wonder if there is any hope for the much-vaunted movement to “reach out for help” and “reduce the stigma”. 

Let’s reduce (eliminate!) the stupidity first.

POST-BLOG. Obviously I still need to write about this. It's the only way I can get my mind around the meltdown that is happening in my field (though, of course, I am forever on the fringes, and now quite relieved to be that way). So please forgive me if I seem repetitive. Illusions are biting the dust all over the place, elitism is rearing its ugly head, friendships are breaking apart, and new writers are wondering how they will ever have a future in this precarious field, or (given the bizarre, sick dynamics of it) if they even want to. And what are the alternatives? 

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Whack jobs: or, why we still can't deal with mental illness

I’ve been having some thoughts lately, mostly triggered by some recent events in the news. It’s about people’s language around mental illness. I have just a bit of trouble with names like loony, whack job, etc. being casually tossed around to label someone who is in psychiatric pain. I hear this every day of my life, and it dismays me. We often talk about “the other”, and I can’t think of a worse example of ostracism for something that is not the person’s fault.

But I am also struggling with the fact that people still sometimes use terms like “committed”,“ arrested” and “incarcerated” when referring to someone who is in so much pain that they are a danger to themselves and, perhaps, those around them. 

Being in hospital because you’re suffering to that degree is not like being dragged off to jail. Even if a person is “committed” (which I didn’t think existed any more), they can sign themselves out after 24 hours. They are not in leg irons. They are not being unfairly labelled “crazy” for their personal beliefs and left on some archipelago with the rest of the raving loonies. This perception is a “snake pit” mentality that harks back to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. 

Sometimes people’s judgement is seriously “off”. What is the alternative for someone who has just said that he is going to kill himself? Just leave him there, send him home? If he were bleeding to death or had a heart attack or was in some other kind of life-threatening danger, I am sure he would be rushed to treatment. Why can’t we see suicide threats the same way? I think it’s because people are expected to just get it together on their own. Shape up. To accept help is to take on a stigma that might, perish the thought, hurt one’s career or standing in the community. (“You know what happened to him, don’t you?”) Some people, believe it or not, would rather die.

Why is a suicidal emergency so different? Because, I believe, we still look at mental illness with horror, paranoia and dread. Misinformation and ignorance is rampant. I’ve never heard of anyone being dragged off to the snake pit against his/her will, and it is extremely hard to get into the average psychiatric facility because there are never any beds (which should tell people something, but there’s an uncomfortable silence around it).

I watched an old TV show the other day, one of those black-and-white dramas, in which a husband and wife were accusing each other of being crazy. The term “put away” was used at least fifteen times. “Put away” is something you use to describe storing cups in a cupboard. But it also implies that you are “done”, that you will never live in the “real” world again. We don’t use this term any more – or at least, not often. But “incarcerated” is almost as damning.

The situation I’m writing about – and I’m sorry I can’t be more explicit, but I am not prepared to do that – seemed to trigger language that was, to say the least, dated, but also fraught with – what? Rage seemed to be uppermost, but I can’t tell for sure because I don’t personally know the people involved.

The first time I heard the term homophobic, I was very confused. Phobic means – fearful. Why would people be fearful of homosexuals? What did this have to do with their prejudice?

Everything. For fear comes of ignorance, and ignorance can be more willful than we want to know. I found this whole situation depressing because it also snagged into personal and professional hierarchies, elitism, and the unassailable power of the patriarchy, not to mention sweeping aside claims of sexual assault. (And where have I heard THAT one before?). 

We pay a lot of lip service to "reducing the stigma" (never eliminating it, as if that is just too gargantuan a task to even consider) and asking people to "reach out for help", neatly leaving it in THEIR hands when they may be too ill to reach out for anything. In cases like this, who will step up, who will be there to fill the void? In too many cases, no one, and the person decides life is too unbearable to continue with. Then it's "well, he just refused to reach out for help, so. . . "

I don’t know how much of this will be resolved (or even improved) in my lifetime. Looking at what has happened to women’s rights in the past few years, we might even go back to leg irons and snake pits. But for God’s sake, people, watch your language! Real human beings are involved. Equating a psychiatric facility with a prison implies some kind of crime, and there is no crime. The gulag is not part of anybody’s reality now.

in·car·cer·ate

inˈkärsəˌrāt/

1. imprison, put in prison, send to prison, jail, lock up, put under lock and key, put away, intern, confine, detain, hold, immure, put in chains, hold prisoner, hold captive; informal put behind bars
   

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Laugh? I nearly died

‘Light-hearted’ ads hope to spark rethink on depression and anxiety

New mental health marketing campaign and online quiz hopes to connect British Columbians with help.

By: David P. Ball Metro Published on Mon Aug 22 2016

Is it a problem if you’re so stressed at work that coffee mugs shatter in your hands — or if you burst into tears every morning when the toaster pops?

Probably, according to new ads created by Vancouver’s Rethink Communications for TV and radio.

The spots are part of a marketing campaign the outside-the-box agency created for the Canadian Mental Health Association B.C. division.

The Bounce Back Today campaign’s hope is to spark some chuckles and chats about depression and anxiety around water coolers and kitchen tables — but more importantly, to help people catch “problems” before they worsen, CMHA B.C.’s senior policy and research director said.

“We want to help activate awareness in people about the symptoms of when mood and anxiety might be outside the norm,” Jonny Morris told Metro in a phone interview, “and to seek help.”

The ads were “designed to help people in a playful but not caricatured way,” he explained, and launched thanks to CMHA B.C. winning the BC Broadcasters Association’s Humanitarian Award — valued at $1 million of advertising airtime for a charity.

"We hope that the advertising campaign will connect with those for whom mental health is not even on their radar," said CMHA B.C.'s CEO Bev Gutray in a statement.

While an admittedly “light-hearted” approach to a national crisis such as mental health might seem counter-intuitive — depression affects one in nine British Columbians, and anxiety one in five — Morris said the ad creators were careful to pull off the gags without mockery or stigma.

“The old-school drive-home-a-hard-message advertising isn’t necessarily as effective any more,” he said. “We want to inspire dinner table and kitchen conversations so we struck a light hearted tone, but the actual light-heartedness isn’t directed at mental illness.”

The campaign draws visitors to an online quiz about their mental state, and also offers fact-sheets, tips on maintaining wellness, and encouragement to speak to a doctor for help — part of CMHA’s existing Bounceback initiative, which is funded by the B.C. government.

“Doctors are the gateway or door to the program,” Morris explained.

Rethink Communications’ previous campaigns include anti-oil tanker ads that leeched black ink when it rained, and creating a Canadian passport-activated free beer fridge for Molson that toured Europe in the lead-up to the Olympics in Russia.

For more information, visit the Bounce Back Today campaign's website.

I guess I should give this a chance. But I don't want to.

Don't want to.

This article brings it home to me that our dread of mental illness is still so great, we now have to resort to "gags" to make it palatable. Like whistling in the dark, laughing in the face of dread (or a dreaded, stigmatized illness) is supposed to make us feel better. Or, perhaps, more distanced.

I sense desperation here. Some advertising company was brought in and told, "For God's sake, HELP us make this subject less distasteful to people! Make it so they can at least say the word ment - . Men - men - MENTAL."

So they take (in their words) a "light-hearted" and "playful" approach, depicting mental illness in all sorts of droll, entertaining ways. The misery/hopelessness/grinding anxiety gags are piled on, but it has a weird feeling to it. A "we're not really SERIOUS about this, folks. . . " Because you can't be serious about a thing like mental health. Can you?

The approach is bizarre, kind of like the old "has this ever happened to you?" Ronco infomercials from the '70s. There's something droll about it, all right, kind of like an Allerest commercial where a person streaming with snot is sitting next to a mountain of balled-up tissues. This is "toy" mental illness, obviously, the cartoon/commercial version, because if it was the real thing - well, you'd have to be pretty callous to laugh at someone who's just slashed their wrists. 

Even the name of the campaign, Bounce Back Today, is more reminiscent of a trampoline (or dryer sheets?) than regaining one's mental health, a process which generally speaking is extremely slow and excruciatingly painful. There is no "fun" mental illness, no matter what the ignorant masses claim. But I would imagine someone in a boardroom dreamed up this idea to put a less-horrific or at least less-distasteful face on the Canadian Mental Health Association's dire mandate, a facelift for an agency that has to deal with whack jobs and writeoffs every day.

I don't know, I always get angry when I see a shallow or desperate or overly-corporate-flavoured approach to a serious subject like this one. Yes, people have trouble talking about mental health "around the water cooler" (and never mind that water coolers haven't existed since about 1949). But guffawing around the water cooler doesn't make things much better. 

It's about at this point that the statistics are trotted out. Blah out of every blah Canadians has a serious case of blah. But it's pain we're talking about, the sort we can't even share. Being sick isn't the issue. The right kind of sick (cancer of any variety) automatically makes you a hero, a "warrior". Even garden-variety stuff will elicit sympathy from co-workers: "Ohhhh, you poor thing."

It's still better to tell them you're off with the flu or meningitis or ANYTHING other than depression. Depression will get you ". . . oh." Or silence. Or maybe even a furtively-whispered, "Don't worry. I won't say anything."

So is raucous laughter/"gags" shared around the water cooler meant to improve the situation, or what? I'm not saying "don't run ads". I'm not saying "only run bleak ads that show morbid self-pitying complainers at their gloomy worst". But what about the popular culture's depiction of cancer? Cancer "warriors" are always depicted as courageous, plucky, and full of hope, even with bald heads. A couple of generations ago, they were hiding in the shadows. My mother's generation would not even say the word.

Something changed in the interim, but I never once heard anyone guffawing about it. I never heard anyone even suggest that the "answer" to the stigma around cancer was a humourous ad campaign showing people playing at having cancer in a lighthearted, wacky, fun way. Oh, that chemotherapy: pesky stuff! But say, didn't I save a lot on hair care products this year? (Frenetic dance showing bald people throwing confetti in the air). And by the way, have you seen my colostomy bag? (chicka-boom).

It never occurred to anyone, not even the most hard-boiled, mercenary ad execs, to try to make cancer "cute". And yet, somehow or other, in the past few decades, everything changed. We can not only talk about cancer but marvel at and celebrate the survivors and the warriors and those who saw it through to the end.

Why isn't that happening here, with this issue, now?

This thing filled me with such dismay that I choked on it. I could not even watch the videos right away. I had to work up to it, then it was just as bad as I thought it would be. Worse. I watched one with the sound off and had a helpless, powerless, gutted feeling. I realized we have not made ANY progress at ALL in this area, that we have, in fact, gone backwards and may continue to do so. This is all just so shallow, so trivial, so dismaying! When I realized the agency who made these ads was also responsible for making a free beer fridge for Molson, not to mention some ad campaign about oil tankers, it made me wonder why they don't use human beings for these things. Lots of people are now on the point of wanting to talk about their experiences with mental illness. Why not use them?

Simple. The dread, the abhorrence and even contempt is just too great, though no one will admit it. We would be more honest if we went back to locking people up in wooden cribs like in Amadeus. But hey, there's a national crisis on, and nothing we've tried so far has worked! For some reason, trying to help those poor blighted souls hasn't made much difference, nor are they showing us any gratitude either. A national crisis calls for extreme measures. And when you think about it - or stop thinking about it - or pull back so far that you can barely see it - hey, this issue really IS pretty funny! 

Laugh? I nearly died.

POSTSCRIPT. I did hear back from the good people who waged this unusual, if desperately misguided "mental health awareness" campaign. I won't reproduce their email to me because it is basically party line, and I've heard it all before. But I will share with you my email response.

I do appreciate your prompt and detailed reply. But the ads are just too flip. I don’t think they are going to accomplish the things you’ve talked about here. They seem almost silly and are pretty close to mockery, the kind of thing you’d see on a sitcom. I’m reminded of The Big Bang Theory where Raj broke up with yet another girl friend, and sat there stuffing his face with junk food, not changing his clothes, etc., very much like the man pictured in the depression ad. The audience sure thought it was funny. So what’s the message – if you don’t get help when you’re a little down, soon you’ll be sitting around in your jammies stuffing your face all day, not shaving, fat, with pizza boxes all over the floor? Is this cartoonish image meant to represent serious depression?

I think it would be much more effective to do short spots where people talk about their experiences, how you can live through mental illness and work hard to regain your health and enjoy life once again. It could be lighthearted. I can’t think of anything more lighthearted than a real person talking about regaining their joy. I watched my brother die of schizophrenia (the life force was sucked out of him, then he died in a fire), and the system could not have failed him more catastrophically. There is some sort of huge gulf between “this” and “that”, between a man crying into a pop-up toaster and a man dying in a burning squat. It’s like another planet. I can’t connect the dots at all.

 

Now that I’ve had some time to reflect, I have to say that some of the images in the ads are downright disturbing. You really lost me with the image of the woman peering anxiously through the blinds. Funny? that she’s afraid to leave her house? And if it isn’t that, what is it? And how are we supposed to feel? That idea of “hey, if you’re a LITTLE afraid to go out, that’s fine. But if you’re a LOT afraid to –”. These are very puzzling, even confusing messages for a mental health-improvement or awareness campaign, and I just can’t see where it will add anything significant to the debate/conversation/struggle. “New” or “different” isn’t necessarily “better”, and trying to be a little more hip or catchy can be a disaster. As I said in my blog post, we honour and celebrate cancer survivors, but don’t create “gags” about them because it is the least funny thing in human experience to die before your time, whether of cancer or a gunshot to the head.

So much needs to be done here, but not like this. I am not sure if these ads were tested or not, but they should have been, by a large sample of people who have been in the trenches of experience.  Ask them how it affects them, if it feels authentic and helpful, if it represents what the real concerns are. Often there is this sense that if you “just get people talking about it”, it makes some sort of difference. I can tell you that it does not. People talk about Donald Trump constantly, and it is NOT helping! In fact, it is just helping HIM to gain more of a stranglehold over the media and the public. Talking and enlightenment are very different things.

Though it seemed to take a million years, finally we saw Clara Hughes take matters into her own hands and bike across Canada – alone. She’s the Terry Fox of her times. But where are all the others? The tshirts and walks and public events are very slow to get off the ground, because the public still recoils, or else goes blank and does not see why they should have to care (let alone give money). But this is what we need! Some say the Cancer Society has “played” the public with their slick campaigns which tug on people’s emotions. On the other hand, cancer is permanently out of the closet now, and it will never go back to the way it was. Mental health issues are about where gay issues were in 1970. We haven’t even had our Stonewall yet. Meantime, we get misguided things like this ad campaign. Is it better than nothing? I’m not sure. If people don’t see the relevance, they’ll click it off the way they do with thousands of other distractions.  I do hope you will try something more authentic and less flip in the future. Do something that will really grab people. Don’t go to some slick ad agency – find someone who really knows how to make powerful, effective spots that touch people’s emotions.  I am getting too old to expect to see significant change about this issue in my time, but I will continue to hope for it.

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