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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Standing again, at the axis of madness

by

20140423

There's some­thing odd that hap­pens when­ev­er I say to oth­ers that I'm a men­tal health pa­tient or that I have been di­ag­nosed as clin­i­cal de­pres­sive.While I'm quite com­fort­able with men­tal ill­ness/mad­ness, I un­der­stand the dis­com­fort such a con­cept caus­es oth­ers es­pe­cial­ly be­cause we've grown so ac­cus­tomed to the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and deroga­to­ry use of the term.My ab­nor­mal men­tal sit­u­a­tion does not scare me nor does it in­stil un­nec­es­sary dread as it does in oth­ers who may be so af­flict­ed or who may just be ig­no­rant of the at­tend­ing is­sues. In­stead, I em­brace the con­di­tion and con­tin­ue to work to help oth­ers find a way with/through it.

In the book, Ex­plor­ing Mad­ness, the au­thors say this: "Psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­ders are usu­al­ly con­sid­ered as ill­ness; yet they are al­so per­ceived as some­what shame­ful–ev­i­dence of sin, pun­ish­able de­fects, a lack of moral fi­bre."This labyrinth of ideas about what mad­ness or men­tal ill­ness is or isn't makes for much con­fu­sion in the way we treat with peo­ple on a spec­trum rang­ing from short-term de­pres­sion to in­san­i­ty. It cre­ates for a "com­plex mix­ture of com­pas­sion, hos­til­i­ty and con­cern."

In fact, I'm aware that in or­der to di­min­ish our own anx­i­eties, it's eas­i­er to la­bel oth­ers and then ap­ply some hu­mour.We seem to think that all el­e­ments of men­tal ill­ness are tan­ta­mount to mad­ness, which is pre­sent­ed as vi­o­lent or bizarre be­hav­iour of some crazed in­di­vid­ual who flies in­to sense­less rage, which pre­cedes de­ment­ed tor­rents.

If you've fol­lowed my writ­ing, you'd know that I al­ways come back to this point–the ax­is of mad­ness, I call it, where it's im­per­a­tive to talk open­ly about men­tal health dis­or­ders and the at­tend­ing neg­a­tive per­cep­tions.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers

for your Free Tri­al of the Dig­i­tal Guardian.

No pay­ment de­tails re­quired, for your Free Tri­al.


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