The Asylum and You Can't Take a Joke?

I going to start from a place of anger that still grates on me these weeks later: I'm tired of mentally ill people being the puppies that everyone can kick and not feel bad about it. A lot of people are still ableist, but the ablesim against mental disorders is hidden and unconscious. Otherwise enlightened people who are kind-hearted use the term "retarded" to describe the inane or other scenarios. And the way mental illness is seen as a weakness and a spectacle is no less problematic. I would ask that any reader reflect whether his or her views of the mentally ill are not as "less than." Less than human.


I left the hospital to find this meme worming its way through my Facebook contacts:
You're in a mental hospital. Use the first 7 people on your chat list (no cheating).
Your roommate:
Person licking the window:
Person helping you escape:
Person running around naked:
Your doctor:
Person yelling nonsense about clowns:
Person you went crazy with:


Let me inform you of your privilege, if you have never been sick enough to have been admitted to a mental hospital. For those of us who have, it is a badge of pain. It's not something most of us hospital veterans would blithely wish upon a facebook friend even as a joke. The symptoms may or may not be actual symptoms, but they are supposed to be funny. Next time someone tags you on this joke, feel free to link to my blog.


I'm the first to see the funny, the ironic, the bizarre, and the absurd. And all of these happen in a mental ward. Of course, so was one schizophrenic patient who called our psychiatrist "the most vanilla guy, like, ever." I do think that there is humor in my own breaks, too. But running a list of stereotypical symptoms and then tagging them on friends, think if you did that to any other racial, ethnic, or other identifying group. No. Just no. Humor has to be done from the inside of the group experience and with heart. So next time you go to point and laugh at a person in the news, who may have had a break of some kind, I ask that you think with your heart, too. Have a chuckle, if you relate, but don't scorn and make her your harlequin. Harlequins often have the most open hearts.