Imagine the scenario: you were invited to tour a psychiatric
hospital by a friend/an association. You signed your name on the guest list, received
the guest badge and stored your personal belongings in a locker. Soon after you
entered the hospital, your guest badge was stolen. The guard didn’t believe you
were actually a guest, even though you were dressed in
non-institutional clothes. He refused to check the guest list for you and
didn’t trust a word you said. So what would you do to prove you were ‘sane’?
Would you keep claiming you are not insane? Play dumb and
agree with everything the doctors said? OR act crazy, undergo their course of treatment
and gradually pretend to get better? OR tell them they are not making you
better – the environment is just making you worse?
The truth is, no matter which option you choose, you won’t
be able to get out unless you have friends and family who can stand by you and
testify that you are not mentally ill. However, before you get
to that stage, the very oppressive, hopeless environment inside the asylum will
most likely lead to your becoming more and more emotionally unstable. Eventually,
you would start doubting yourself mentally and turn into one of the patients.
The question of what is sane and what insane is illustrated
in the ‘Stark
Raving Dad’ episode in The Simpsons Season 3.
Homer was accidentally admitted to the mental hospital,
because he wore a pink shirt while all the others were wearing white. This
action was seen as a threat and he was described as a ‘free-thinking
anarchist’.
Homer: This isn’t fair! How can you tell who’s sane and
who’s insane?
Doctor: Well we have a very simple method.
*Doctor stamps Homer’s hand: ‘INSANE’
Doctor: Whoever has that stamp on his hand is insane.
The writer and philosopher Criss Jami once said,
‘When you are the only sane person, you look like the only insane person’.
Insanity and sanity are a matter of perspective; they are
relative terms that change throughout history and culture. What was defined as
‘mental’ in the old days may be something that
we accept nowadays. One obvious example is homosexuality. It is still very
embarrassing to remember that it was less than half a century ago that being
gay was defined as a mental illness. It’s commonly known that homosexuality was
listed as a ‘sociopathic personality disorder’ from 1952 until 1973. Doctors
were paid to treat it; scientists to research its causes
and cures. Gay people had to undergo countless therapies, including
electric shocks, years on the couch, behaviour modification and surrogate sex. Apart
from displaying affection towards those of the same gender, some of the
‘symptoms’ of homosexuality included depression, anxiety and suicide attempts.
The declassification of it as a mental illness proved that all those ‘symptoms’
were just the result of society’s judgement and hostility, rather than the
sexual orientation itself. To be fair, the anxiety and distress that often accompany
a mental disorder are usually the consequence of being misunderstood and
labelled as some kind of dangerous creature by the majority.
When everyone around you thinks you are crazy, even if you
think differently, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Imagine the whole world’s
population is against you; it would be almost impossible to prove to a majority
that they are wrong if you don’t have a few strong allies to stand up for you. Even
though you may know that you aren’t insane, over time, as people keep telling
you that you are crazy and treating you like someone threatening, you are going
to start doubting whether you were ever ‘normal’.
Maybe everyone else is right: you are ill, and treatment is
needed.
This is how labelling ruins people’s
life. Those who act a bit outside the norm, or just not like everyone else tend
to be called ‘weird’. The burdens they have to carry are so heavy that most of
them cannot mentally withstand them and will eventually crash into a mental
breakdown, which turns them into real psychotics. We need to talk to people
before we judge them. After all, psychotics were just like us.
In fact, most of us could be diagnosed with something, such
as OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), bipolarity or histrionic personality
disorder. I myself am self-centred, stubborn and arrogant; I am not always
emotionally stable, have problems taking orders and sometimes I may even
think of hurting or killing someone. I am sure everyone experiences that moment
at some point in their lives. So, who is normal anyway?
In any case, why fit in, when you were born to stand out?
