Turning the Tables: Maybe Mental Illness is Pretending Everything is OK, And the People We call Mentally Ill Are The Sane Ones

Ask people off-handedly about what they think of Sinead O’Connor. Over half of the responses will be something along the lines, “didn’t she go crazy?” It’s not their fault for having that opinion. Our media exploits emotional breakdowns for views and advertising revenue. This is not a conspiratorial remark, it is a fact that high drama sells, and Sinead has never been afraid to bring drama. “Sinead is a successful songwriter” was never as profitable a headline for corporations as “Sinead has gone off the deep-end.” But how many people who call her crazy have taken the time to listen to Sinead’s emotional outbursts, rather than letting the talking head’s on TV narrate the story to them? Probably no one who wasn’t interested in Sinead before she started making headlines for “being crazy” has heard her out, and although “Nothing Compare’s 2 U,” has over 40 million views on youtube, it takes more patience than most of us have in the digital age to really hear what she had to say in her most recent controversy, the “one of millions,” facebook video. At first glance, it’s an incoherent cry for help. But if you have experience with what she is talking about, it becomes clear that her complaints are quite valid. Just as she was ahead of her time in identifying the abuses of the catholic church, the lies of the British empire and the retelling of history surrounding the Irish potato famine, and the generational effects of systemic abuse on children born in times of colonization, Sinead again is remarkably apt and brave in her assessments in her “one of millions” video. I would suggest you watch it yourself rather than let me narrate it for you.  

I, personally, have never liked the term mental illness. There’s no huge difference in my mind between the terms, “mentally ill” and “retarded.” But, I’d rather not be called either.  I’ve never been diagnosed for any “mental illness,” but I know intuitively that if I wanted to, I could see a doctor, make my case, get pills prescribed, and schedule weekly meetings. I use two medications, outside of arranging my whole life around catering to healthy low-stress requirements. I use marijuana daily, and if the conditions get bad enough, I make strong St. John’s Wort tea. Up until this point in my life, through self-medication, I have been able to operate within the parameters that society deems acceptable. But more and more, I feel the notion growing in me, that masking my depression, even with natural medication, is not the answer either. It’s not that the medication doesn’t work. It just doesn’t feel right anymore to manufacture happiness for myself when it comes at the cost of being completely unable to change the environment I am stuck in. The same environment millions of people just like me are stuck in with less resources than I have to make a difference. If we never change our environment, the so-called “mentally ill” are, in fact, permanently mentally ill. Medications dilute passion, so we will always be playing a game that we will lose because we do not get to play with a full deck. Yet we will be forced to play and lose again and again, until the day we die.   

The environment I speak of is this paradigm built by billionaire capitalists. This environment prioritizes the weapons manufacturing and arms industry profits over people’s lives, prioritizes oil industry profits over clean drinking water, prioritizes food monopoly profits over health, and prioritizes pharmaceutical industry profits over cures to disease. I write this article, unafraid of being a civilian casualty to foreign bombs, while having access to clean food and drinking water, and not suffering from any addiction comparable to opiate reliance, so what’s the source of my depression? I think it comes from the fact that challenging this environment on a whole will get me shunned and outcast from what I knew of as my tribe. We are very much social creatures. And I have seen without question that I would need to compromise my beliefs that I know to be true to continue fitting in with my tribe.  

 I have to reiterate my privilege again because I often wonder where I would be without the “head start,” I received from having Grandparents who invested their money well, and gave generously. Despite my privilege, I do have a hardy soul, and believe I could endure the rigors of homelessness better than the soul-sapping drudgery of doing a job every day that I hate, but those seem like the only two possibilities, and I don’t know for sure since that is not my life. But this is for sure, if I was homeless, the tribe I had come from would generally identify me as crazy, and if I was suffering every day in corporate America, my tribe would identify me as successful. If I was homeless, my tribe would no longer be within reach, but if I had a corporate job, I would still see them every Christmas.    

I lived in Los Angeles for four years, the homeless capital of the US. Maybe people, who have not seen it, do not understand the problems inherent in this country that has allowed such a large mass of people to become thrown aside, discounted and forgotten. Maybe it’s easier to say they’re all just drug-addicts. But even the maybe pregnant and usually drunk prostitute, who haunted the street right outside my apartment had a light in her eyes that showed to everyone who cared to look that there was a thinking, feeling, and calculating person inside, with a history, a family, and a former tribe that had forgotten about her. Even when I did not have money to give, I tried to make eye contact with every person who asked me for change, and at least tell them, “I’m sorry.” I did this to let them know that I did actually see and hear them.   

Maybe people who protect themselves in suburbs with police to keep the homeless away just have not seen enough examples to realize something has gone very wrong. But my patience for people’s willful blindness is dwindling. Sinead O’Connor is right, she is but one of millions. I am one of millions. And how millions of people have fallen through the cracks of what is called acceptable by an increasingly rigid society without a safety net is still going unnoticed becomes more and more unconscionable. I am starting to think maybe there is something wrong with people who accept the status quo in a society that marginalizes everyone who asks questions about the official narratives spun by our government and mainstream media outlets. Maybe the mentally ill ones are those who keep insisting that everything is ok.