Monday, 8 September 2014

The Asylum

'It is a truth universally acknowledged that the mentally ill have always made others rather uneasy.'

Or I think that's how P&P starts.  Either way my point is still the same, we can all deal with physical illness but when it comes to the mind it's an uncomfortable subject.  I suppose it's because when we think of cancer we think of 'My Sister's Keeper' but when we think of a mental illness Bertha Rochester springs down from her attic and screams at us in a traditional lunatic kind of way.

  
Luckily, these days, those who are suffering tend to be treated rather than locked in an attic - but there are still definitely those who'd much rather that these 'attention seekers' be hidden away rather than continuing to make people feel uncomfortable.  It got me thinking about the times gone by, how physical illness has fought to become accepted but mental illness is still left very much in the dark.

The Ancient Greeks were the first to talk about problems of the mind (because, let's face it, they were quite often the first to do anything).  Socrates praised the positive aspects calling it a 'manic art' which Pythagoras admitted to hearing voices.  Hippocrates talks of melancholia which is a general umbrella term for all the different diagnosis's of today.  Mela - meaning black  and khole means bile.  Black bile is one of the four humours and supposedly the reason for this illness.  When a bigger Roman influence came in, the Greek physician Asclepiades advocated more human treatments such as diet and massages and freed insane persons from confinement.  Another physician, Celsus, suggested more therapies such as:

  • bloodletting
  • drugs
  • talking
  • incubation in temples
  • exorcism
  • incantations
  • amulets and other such charms
  • starvation
  • being terrified suddenly
  • agitation of the spirit
  • stoning
  • beating
Many people comment today that there is a rise in mental illness - suggesting that there is no such thing.  
If those were the treatments in the past, I completely understand keeping quiet.  

The Muslim world continued where the Greeks had left off in the Middle Ages, striving to learn more about this melancholia.  Their ethos was that the mentally ill were there to be protected and treated humanely and built the first psychiatric hospitals for them.  

Meanwhile in the Western world, Christians continued to believe in the four humours but also believed that mental illness was a punishment for sin.  Rather than the talking and activity therapies that the Muslims advocated, they preferred purging the body of the evil that plagued the body, whipping, fasting or in same cases exorcism.  It was also decided that there was the naturally born 'idiot' or the 'lunatic' - luna coming from the Latin word for moon as it was now believed that the cycle of the moon had a profound effect on the mind.  

Dancing Mania was a social phenomenon which is, quite frankly, bizarre.  It was primarily in Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries and involved people, sometimes in their thousands, dancing erratically until they collapsed from exhaustion.  It has been noted down that these people didn't even seem conscious - they were on another planet entirely.  Some dressed peculiarly and decorated themselves with flowers, some walked around naked and a few were even said to have sex right while they were dancing.  Throughout the dancing they all made as much noise as possible: laughing, crying, screaming and calling out.  
Understandably, people had no idea how to cure these people.  For a time they had musicians play their instruments to try and put off the dancers - but obviously that just encouraged more people to join in.  

Learning about that only made me all the more bewildered that these days we can't even handle people confessing to us that they're feeling down.  

The mentally ill were a fantastic scape goat during the witch hunts.  Authorities had to show that they were doing something and there was no one to defend these lunatics.  The majority of families couldn't cope with looking after them - quite often the social stigma was too much to bear, and so these people would be confined to workhouses, prisons and the new and upcoming madhouses.  Often these places were bursting at the seams and they needed a way to crack down on the numbers.  

By the end of the seventeenth century, it was generally accepted that God didn't send down illnesses as punishments and it was purely physical rather than a reflection of their morals.  However, this new theory really didn't help matters and it is from this we have the stereotypical idea of a lunatic.  Like wild animals, you could go and watch the inmates and Bedlam as a form of entertainment.  Harsh treatment was accepted - almost expected and the masters of these places would boast of their skill with the whip.  Essentially, the place you went to be treated at such a crucial time in your life was the place that elated in taking out the last of your humanity.  
Lucikly 100 or so years later, reformers managed to break through the ceiling and fought for more humane treatments - some of them even being ex-patients.  However, not everyone agreed and even then the reformers weren't exactly the same standard we have today.  For example, physicians in the United States were adamant that the black slaves who tried to escape were merely affected by a mental illness caused by their evolution over time.  

The 20th century sought to fight off the negative stigmas around mental illness - now referring to asylums as hospitals and lunatics as patients.  
But Nazi Germany was not so kind.  The mentally ill were not what they wanted in their idealistic lifestyle and were therefore one of the first groups to be targeted.  It is estimated that over 200,000 people were put to death, and yet they receive hardly any attention when it comes to thinking of the crimes against humanity during those years.  

So why does it make us uncomfortable?  Are we not more educated now?  If 1 in 3 of us will suffer with something of the mind at some point in our lives, then why are we not accepting of it?  You can bluff and say that you are fine with it all you like but honestly think of the difference of your reaction in this.
1) A stranger sits next to you on a bus and announces that they have cancer.  Obviously your reactions will include really? and why are you telling me this? but there will also be a large amount of sympathy/shock.  Most likely you will get into a conversation about it, talk about treatments and charities, awkwardly wish them well for the future.  When you get home you tell your family about this poor person you met on the bus.
2) A stranger sits next to you on a bus and announces that they are schizophrenic.  Again there will be the reactions of really? and why are you telling me this? but can you honestly hand on heart say that you would react in the same way you did to the person with cancer?  Why not?  Neither illness is catching and neither person asked for their illness.  

Again, we are fretting about this idea of Bertha in the attic.  We worry that as they are unbalanced they will hurt us - because that is the only thing they'll be occupied with, right?  Hurting other people?  
The main label I see people branded with is 'attention-seekers', it's one that I have been branded with a fair amount of times (ta, sweetheart) and it is the one that disgusts me the most.  

If I were to announce to the world how unhappy I was then I'd be called an attention-seeker.
If I were to keep quiet and keep my head down - walking away from negative situations and so on, I'd be called an attention seeker.  
If I were to put on a happy face and show the world no sign of anything going wrong in my life then I'd feel so much worse for bottling up.  

'I know, Vincent.  It's infuriating.'

And eventually I learnt that the problem was not with me, but just the general ignorance that surrounds illnesses of the mind.  We need to get over this idea that people ask for mental illness.  We need to realise that pretending the problem doesn't exist only makes it worse.  But most of all we need to be kind to one another and stop blaming people for not fitting in to your ideal  - because that just makes you a Nazi.  


Obviously this kind of thing doesn't help.  It trivialises these disorders, thus making others believe that we are making much ado about nothing.  




 Let's be positive now and stop stigma.
 Let's be kinder and more understanding.

 It's all very well saying to someone whose depressed 'oh, well at least you're not starving in Africa,' but that only makes them feel 1000% worse.

It's all very well saying, 'can't see what she's so depressed about?' but you haven't walked in those shoes.  Things affect people differently, no two people have the same journey.

And finally I present to you a list of just a few famous faces who have battled/are battling demons in their minds.  




























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