Mad Pride: Part III

The Mad Pride movement or people who independently think along the same lines, are devoting blogs to specific mental illnesses. One such blogger is writer and journalist Liz Spikol. Her blog The Trouble With Spikol is currently one of the most popular blogs on the subject of madness. Liz has bipolar disorder and speaks openly about her own experiences with madness, as well as writing about issues that affect the mental health community.

In these videos, Liz discusses her personal experiences with electro-convulsive therapy or ECT, in her straightforward, humorous and charming manner. Since her treatment, Spikol has spoken out against ECT.

Video I - 11:20 in duration



Video II - 6:34 duration



Below are a few links to descriptions of ECT, both pro and con:

http://www.antipsychiatry.org/ect.htm

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/electroconvulsive-therapy/MH00022

http://www.ect.org/index.php

Mad Pride Movement Part II

Violence And Mental Health

When I think about the “obviously” mad people of the world, I can’t help but make a limited comparison to Middle Eastern folk living in the western world. When people encounter the obviously mad, don’t they think for a brief moment that they might be dangerous? Don’t we perhaps fear that they will rape our mother, stab our brother or shoot someone famous as they’re walking into the lobby of their penthouse? Do they hear a voice from their god telling them to do it? They may even think there will salvation for them come judgment day, if they do away with the sinful. Have you ever heard “the terrorists” referred to as crazy?

I’m not attempting with this post to write anything factual or to suggest solutions. In fact, I have more questions than answers, along with my own experiences, biases and opinions on the subject of madness. The fact that I tip toward madness myself does not make me an expert on it but neither does it preclude me from my own prejudices and assumptions about madness in general and the criminally ill, in particular, which is what this post is sort of about.

When I think about the Virginia Tech shooting, which is often, I hurt. Firstly, and it goes without saying, there is the tragedy of thirty or so lives being taken in one fell swoop by an obviously crazed killer. Then there is the matter of the shooter himself. Am I allowed to feel empathy for him even if I could muster it? It is very, very hard for me to do so. When I encounter a lonely, alienated, angry individual I can’t help but think that they might be capable of an act of violence of one scale or another. For the most part, I dismiss this quickly and I try to allow what is good and humane in me to disallow such negative and stereotypical fears.

I read this in an article from the Canadian Mental Health Association:

Recent studies have showed that alcohol and substance abuse far outweigh mental illness in contributing to violence. A 1996 Health Canada review of scientific articles found that the strongest predictor of violence and criminal behavior is not major mental illness, but past history of violence and criminality.

There are exceptions where there are no predictors. Just as they exist among the general population. The cases where the mentally ill have committed horrible crimes are always the subject of media scrutiny. Not just the news itself but follow-up news of all sorts, interviews with experts, biographies of the people who committed the crimes and their families and the grieving of the families of murdered love ones.

The cases that come immediately to mind are the Andrea Yates case (postpartum depression and psychosis) who drowned her five children and Seung Hui Cho (anxiety disorder and depression), the man responsible for the Virginia Tech Massacre where 32 people were killed and 20 others injured and where the shooter took his own life.

In these cases, the mentally ill commit heinous crimes to which connections to their illness can be made. Am I crazy (pardon the irony) in feeling strongly that the mental illness in and of itself is perhaps not the entire reason for the violence of people like Yates and Cho?

The conditions which increase the risk of violence are the same whether a person has a mental illness or not. Throughout our society, alcohol and drug use are the prime contributors to violent behaviour.

Another important factor is a violent background. Individuals suffering from psychosis or neurological impairment who live in a stressful, unpredictable environment with little family or community support may be at increased risk for violent behaviour. The risk for family violence is related to, among other factors, low socioeconomic status, social stress, social isolation, poor self esteem and personality problems. (Canadian Mental Health Association)

There are so many variables that can interact with a mental illness. The environment in which a person grows up, various forms of trauma, society’s reactions to the person, and in the case of Andrea Yates, physical and psychological exhaustion from having too many children, too close together, among other factors that have been explored regarding her troubled life.

To say that an individual with mental illness acts violently due exclusively to that illness, is like trying to determine one specific cause of death in a person who is killed in an automobile crash. (Please, readers, if you feel this is a bogus analogy, please do let me know through comments.)

So what do we do about the stigma that surrounds mental illness and which contributes to the social view that a person who has it may be the next Andrea Yates or Seung-Hui Cho?

As a woman who has dealt with depression all her life and who is the mother of a daughter with bipolar illness, it is my strong belief that we must be open about it, whenever possible. As the Mad Pride movement suggests, we must tell people in an attempt to illustrate – see, I am a contributing member of society, I am a good-enough mother, I am, even, a peacenik. If enough people saw that mental illness is not a prescription for disaster, I think social attitudes would begin to change.

The Mad Pride movement offers much to people in the way of coming together to be seen and heard but we must do it as individuals as well. It is no easy task. Since many people continue to see individuals through the lens of their label only, the labeled worry that their job performances, for instance, will be evaluated more through the lens of the disability than people who are not obviously mad. Even personality characteristics and quirks are often blamed on the mental illness, as apposed to “that’s just how she is”. This is frustrating and difficult because everyone gets sad or angry or frustrated but when one has a mental illness, one is subject to those assumptions. Even the mad individual can question him/herself, as I often have. Am I this way or that way because I am depressed or would I be this way regardless?

The degree to which one opens up is an individual thing. I have told many people that I’m a depressive (just what I call it) but rarely do I discuss the nuances of my situation with the non-depressed. I allow it to suffice that I tell someone I’m a depressive; just as I may tell also tell them that I am divorced, without getting into the reasons why my marriage didn’t work. Whether it’s depression or divorce, I don’t go around announcing hello, I’m divorced, hello, I’m depressed. It’s only brought up if it fits the context of the conversation. In that sense I tend to be private about my depression but I will not be entirely silent.

I’m not suggesting that the stigma of mental illness will be lifted anytime soon simply due to people coming out about being mad. It’s only one small step toward a broader social perspective on madness. I know that I feel much more confident about coming out as a depressive or discussing my daughter’s bipolar madness than I would have ten years ago.

Mad Pride...yes...but I suspect we can all define as "Mad"...

I just wanted to thank The Poetry Man again for opening up this pace. You completely rock.

I also want to thank Pagan Sphinx for the post about The Mad Pride Movement. I wrote this comment. But I wanted to foreground it so as hopefully offer more space to the topic of "madness".

Who is mad?
I'm fairly certain that the people who make the decisions for us in various government houses all over the world are mad. Yet they will never have to be worried about being discredited or found out as fucking completely insane.

What is mad?
I'm also fairly certain that mad people are among the most sane people on the planet and that they are less insane and more oppressed because what is commonly defined as sane is so fucking over the top constrictive and merciless.

Who gets to decide if I'm mad?
I've been called crazy or insane by people who were taught to live in a dissassociative state since they were children. When they here my thoughts so completely grounded in my intuitions, perceptions, reality, core, they are confronted with a choice of defining me as in/sane or themselves as having been profoundly fucked over. Guess which one they usually prefer to choose. (laughter of the damned.)

Why does the concept of madness exist?
In a world where human beings have been taught to only believe what they've been taught or what they've been told, binaries abound. This or that. Me or them. Here or there. Out and in. Top and bottom. We've been taught to rely on the existence of binaries rather than continuums. It's how we code and categorize what we know of the world, of ourselves and of each other. From this place it becomes pretty easy to construct any experience or set of perceptions that presents on one extreme of a binary or completely outside a binary as in/sane.

Most people who experience oppression, who rebel or resist or who just roll up in a ball and wait for the psychic beatings to stop are considered in/sane. Wimmin, queers, sexual deviants, people of colour, poly people, trans and intersexed people, youth, old people. All in/sane.

If they openly display evidence of this in/sanity for all to see they risk medication, incarceration, violence, death...for their own good. It's all for their own good.

This doesn't sit well with me. It hurts my head, my spirit and my heart. The hurt shows on my face, bends my back and slows my stride. My eyes are wild with the hurt. My face can frown more than considered womanly. I worry about being caught showing too much hurt, confusion, rage, disgust with the way things are.

I worry they'll come for me. I wonder why they haven't yet come to medicate me. I sometimes pray they'll hurry up and medicate me. Feeling this much sucks. Feeling nothing, being comfortably numb seems so seductive on some days. Biting the inside of my cheek numb. Twitching and drooling numb. Able to function robot like as a contributing member of the hell also known as society would seem like an endearing thought...if I didn't have recurring dreams of burning the whole thing down.

anyhoo...
here's the comment I wrote about the Mad Pride post...

Dark Daughta said...
Hi,
Thanks for this. As someone who usually defines as insane, not jokingly, but seriously, I realize that the society is so profoundly diseased and disassociative that it's almost impossible for those who live in it, maintain it and rely on it for sustenance and a sense of validation to be anything but mad.

Madness is ubiquitous, not rare. Because the society is hierarchical and power based it becomes necessary to single out some people and label their perceptions and reactions and ways of being as "mad". But in truth they're the sane ones in that they have, whether by accident or through design, to get a grasp of how profoundly fucked this place actually is. There is no way to look around at who we are as a species, what we've done to the planet, how our families function and how we lie, lie, lie about every aspect of our lives without going irrevocably mad. It's the only truly sane response. I'm still learning to live with what I see and understand. On good days I feel crazed and defiant. On bad days I participate. Mad Pride for us all. Long live Mad Pride.

The Mad Pride Movement: PART I

A shift is taking place among the mental health population and society is beginning to take notice. In the Sunday Times May 11 edition, an article by Gabriella Glasser discusses the Mad Pride movement; an attempt by those who feel stigmatized by mental illness to reclaim the concept of madness, very much the same way that the Gay Pride movement has reclaimed the concept of queerness.

Madness has historically been a reason for isolation, cruelty and even death for those who suffered from unknown or misunderstood conditions we now know as psychiatrically based, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (manic-depression).

We’ve come a long way in understanding these conditions, rendering once medically accepted procedures such as lobotomy and antiquated electro-shock therapies (EST) illegal. Pharmaceutical companies have developed increasingly effective medications to treat even the most stubborn forms of psychiatric illness.

If I may be allowed to do a bit of reclaiming of my own, where we still have a long way to go is in the misinformation, attitudes and prejudices of society toward those who are mad. Further and more importantly, mad people should be but are not often protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Discrimination is alive and well in the workplace, on college campuses and in the mental health delivery system itself.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 5.7 million Americans over the age of 18 have the mood disorder called bipolar illness. Another 2.4 million are classified as schizophrenia, which is considered a thought disorder. A few; a very few, are beginning to come out of the closet, as gays have done in record numbers in recent years. In so doing, they hope to tell the world that their disability is a part of who they are and that despite it, they can lead productive and even inspiring lives.

The idea of madness and living an inspiring life is not a new idea. Those of us who have been inspired by the likes of Beethoven and Van Gogh (bipolar “guesses”), or Jack Kerouac (schizophrenic), probably have learned or guessed that their madness contributed to their genius.

The mad pride movement is exciting in that it attempts to demystify mental illness, not just among the talented and gifted but among regular people who are living among us productively, creatively and now, just beginning to do so with pride and dignity as well.

One such person is Elyn Saks, a University of Southern California law professor who has learned to live with and accept her schizophrenic illness and psychosis. Her memoir The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness was only published after Ms. Saks received tenure at USC. Even in an academic setting, where one could assume people are better educated about mental illness, Dr. Saks felt she had to keep quiet until she was guaranteed a place in academia.

Mad pride parades and events are a good start toward embracing the uniqueness and fundamental humanness of people with mental illness, certainly, but additionally society must face the facts. The sheer numbers of people diagnosed with mental illness means that we encounter many people throughout our lives who may not be “normal” psychologically.

As a society, we have to begin to understand mental illness as a medical situation with psychological and social manifestations. Even cancer has those implications. The fear that accompanies perceptions of mental illness are thus ingrained because we fail to see that the mind, as creative and essential to human survival as it may be, can fail us in very much the same way as a kidney or a heart; except that it cannot be replaced. It must be maintained, nurtured and respected. For some, drugs do wonders in achieving this aim. For others, as the mad pride movement illustrates, seeking normalization through drug therapy feels intrusive if not altogether invasive. Just as some people choose not to treat a tumor with radiation, some people with mental illness choose alternatives to chemicals through a balanced and conscious life, exercise, diet and talk therapy.

Reclaiming one’s madness is a form of taking control. Ironically, taking control of one’s life is perhaps the sanest thing anyone can do.