"A Breath of Wind from the Wings of Madness" - Baudelaire

It was a breath of wind from the wings of madness. Perhaps it was more like a gust of wind that knocked me off my feet. “Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” (- Frida Kahlo) Unconventional Frida: she dressed like a man for family photos; she read and wrote about revolution; she lived authentically. She rejected mainstream norms and in her paintings revealed a truth about an inner reality. I see something in her that I have, or I wish to have, in myself. I want to participate in creating social change. I am tired of the oppression and stigma that paralyze innocent people in our society. I heard that a wise prophet once said to a paralyzed man, “Pick up your mat and walk.” Can change be that easy? The oppressive forces in our society do not allow one to pick up and just go. How can we create change and fight invisible forces like stigma, power and oppression?

I have a reality that I am allowed to keep hidden because I look white and female and “normal” to the outside observer. But, the truth is I have been diagnosed with a mental illness. “Bipolar disorder” is the label they gave me, stuck on me, and will forever stigmatize me – but only if I let it be known. I can choose to keep this hidden and avoid judgment. Yet, I want to live authentically and I want to fight for change.   

Even though I’m mentally/emotionally paralyzed, I want someone/something/some power to heal me. I want someone to tell me to pick up my mat and walk. I want to love others and create change. But, I don’t want the kind of change that white missionaries (or white settlers or Euro-Americans or Europeans everywhere who are obsessed with “saving” and changing others) try to make. I don’t want to create more oppression. I want oppression everywhere to end. And I cannot use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.

How does one fight against oppression? How does one fight for revolution, for an end to racism, stigma, judgment, and power? Lois Beardsley, a Native woman, writes: 

“There is no way to know in advance. Racism, stupidity, hatred, hunger for power – they do not come with road signs. They do not come with billboards. They do not come with flashing lights. They do not come with blaring horns, attention-grabbing sirens, GONNA HURT YOU written backwards so we can see it in a rearview mirror. Abusers do not necessarily come in a different cloth from the common man. They do not necessarily come with their intentions posted on their foreheads, etched upon their long toothed trickery, which is unspoken in the silent beckoning motions of their hands. Abusers are born of tradition, tradition of history, tradition of eminent domain, manifest destiny, slave holding, low-wage-paying, advantage taking, murdering, homesteading, let’s not forget.” (p. 8, The Women’s Warrior Society)

How do we fight a hidden, silent, difficult-to-recognize enemy – a “meme” – born of tradition and history? Ability/Abilism. Race/Racism. Class/Classism. Sexuality/Gender/Sexism. I feel a brewing, a burning in my heart. I feel a frustration, a discontentment, and a deep longing that I am afraid of because I need to take care of my mental health but I also can’t be mentally healthy in a society like this.

I remember a time…time in the psych hospital. I felt so free there for a moment. I let my hair loose. I wore no make-up. I danced and laughed and cried whenever I felt the urge inside me and all expressions of being were ok in that place; that psych ward in the hospital. I was “crazy” after all and could do or say anything I wanted. My only punishment was a lifelong sentence - a diagnosis. And now? Now, what have I become? I take my prescribed dose of medication every day. I fix my hair. I carefully apply make-up in the mornings. I am married to a good, middle-class man. We might as well have a white picket fence outside.

The world can be open and wonderful, expansive and has room for everything under the sun. And I don’t want mainstream, banal, submissive life. I want color and music and love and diversity. I want my children to grow up with role models and examples of all different ways of being. I want more from life than the mainstream. I feel as though I have almost everything – and want none of it. There is a force inside me that is bucking like a wild horse; there is within me a breath of wind from the wings of madness.

Changing Perspectives: A belief in the biology of mental illness increases public stigma

http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/3/477.full.pdf

"Mental Illness" - too spicy a term?

I was listening to NPR the other day, and Robert Siegel was interviewing author Ralph Keyes about his book, Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms. They discussed how words change over time and that we constantly (and creatively) come up with new words to tiptoe around things that make us uneasy. Robert Siegel said:

“In his new book about euphemisms, Ralph Keyes takes me back to browsing through a book on my parents' bookshelf about 50 years ago. It was a psychology text, probably written sometime before the Second World War, probably for some education course my father took. And it described the precise ranges of IQ that defined an idiot, a moron and an imbecile.

“My father instructed me that those terms and the broad category that included them all, the feeble-minded, were old ways of saying what we now said more properly. Such people were not to be called feeble-minded, idiotic, imbecilic or moronic. They were to be called retarded, mentally retarded. It was only deep into adulthood that I realized after using that word, that phrase, that it had become completely unacceptable.

“So it goes with euphemisms. One generation's version of polite and scientific is the next generation's standard for ham-fisted and defamatory.”

Describing people with mental illness is no different. Words like “lunatic,” “insane,” and “mad” have evolved from time to time trying to make it easier to describe people who experience symptoms of depression, mania, psychosis, shifting moods, and strange thoughts. So, right now maybe it’s easier or more politically correct to call people who experience these symptoms “mentally ill”, but even that is beginning to shift.

At a recent conference, Charlie Morse, who runs the suicide prevention program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, stated, "I think we have to stop calling everything 'mental illness.' It stigmatizes people who have depression or anxiety, the ubiquity of suffering that we all experience. Mental illness, describing depression, is the same word used to describe schizophrenia. It drives people underground."

My problem with Morse’s quote is this: it is basically saying that schizophrenia gives depression a bad name. Many people think of schizophrenia or bipolar as the really "bad" mental illnesses - the true "crazies." This quote is basically saying that by calling everything "mental illness," we aren't distinguishing the crazies from the mix. Has the term "mental illness" gotten too spicy?   

Ralph Keyes writes: “As we’ll see throughout this book, euphemisms are created in a wide variety of ways and for a multitude of reasons. This usually involves reducing the temperature of overheated rooms. The hotter the topic, the cooler the words we rely on to discuss them…Therapists, self-helpers, and recovery groups have given us a bonanza of mild euphemistic terms to take the place of spicier ones.” 

With events like the Tucson shooting and shootings at Virginia Tech, the room is getting hotter. People are starting to feel the spice of the words “mental illness.” And people are calling for a change in the words we use. No one wants to be associated with people who experience symptoms of depression, mania, psychosis, shifting moods, and strange thoughts. “Mental illness” is the politically correct way to talk about people who experience this range of symptoms, but surely with time, this name will change.

I’ve heard that there are hundreds of words for describing snow. I don’t care if we come up with hundreds of more ways to describe “mental illness.” Call it the “blues” or depression, “madness” or bipolar and schizophrenia. As far as name calling goes, I have no problem with creativity, new words, new definitions, or more distinguishing definitions.

Ralph Keyes stated on NPR: “You know, when Shakespeare called the sex act, making the beast with two backs, we had a very creative mind at work.” I don’t have a problem with “fucking” or making the beast with two backs. In fact, I find it quite pleasurable. Call it what you will. To Charlie Morse I will say this: As far as the ubiquity of suffering goes, I have great compassion. Of course we don’t want to stigmatize those with depression or anxiety. Of course! What I have a problem with is the stigma, the vitriol and fear, surrounding mental illness in general (and around schizophrenia specifically). Changing the name will not take this away. We must find another way.