Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes, 7

Mental illness, as it is known and commonly defined, is nothing but a social construction. I am going to take liberty with a quote from the late Doris Lessing, who in her 1985 Massey Lectures series, "Prisons We Choose To Live Inside". chose as the title to one of her talks these telling words: "You Are Damned; We Are Saved." Or, one could say: "You Are Sick; We Are Well." Ah, the courage to come back. That is the name of the fancy-schmancy fund-raising gala put on by the mental health poohbahs in Vancouver every year. A special award and honours are given for the token-of-the-year award. The mental health consumer-survivor who has most become exactly the way society wants them to be. Completely adjusted, completely conformed to the current norms, doing well in work, in whatever. And I trust that the recipients of said award are generally pretty happy and doing well with their lives. Against all odds they have become successfully independent, they are going to school, working, they have started their own business, or, maybe they're not really doing any of those things, but they are taking their meds every day, participating in programs for rehab, activities and occupation, and especially doing well working with their peers to help them get off their medicated backside and back into every day life. There is nothing really wrong with any of this. There is also a lot that is right about it. However... It is concerning that people are being awarded for having, in their words, "the courage to come back." Come back to what? I want to ask. I have already elucidated ad nauseum that sickness is merely a collective projection of the diseased humanity that everyone shares in common. Instead of owning it, rather than face what is really wrong with us, because we are the functioning majority, we declare that there is nothing at all wrong with us. I`m alright, Jack, but I don`t know about you! Throughout our sad and troubled history we have always singled out the deviants, those who stray from the norm, demonized them, pathologized them, persecuted and stoned them, shunned and excluded them. Mental health clients are just simply the contemporary manifestation for this broadsided contempt. As a sop to how progressive and enlightened we are now, we don't shun them (well, not really), nor do we burn them as witches or cut open their chests as offerings to bloodthirsty gods. We simply try to cure them. We whisper in their ear how lovely it would be if they could just become like the rest of us. Human monoculture you know. Monsanto for sociologists. It is already known what monoculture does to ecosystems. Those vast plantations of soy, corn, cacao, oil palm, sugar cane, wheat, canola, or pick any one of your choosing, displaces the kind of species and species diversity that make this earth habitable. Similarly in society's approach to mental health wellness and recovery. Simply make them all as much as possible resemble happy little workers, consumers, people with families and regular jobs and very little likelihood to think very deeply about things and, hey presto! You have mental health recovery! Medicated, tamed, domesticated and made completely inoffensive. Law-abiding of course. And living out the rest of their lives in a perpetually lobotomized state. Just like the rest of us!