Comments I don’t let through: Saturday afternoon hate potpourri

This is going to be a wall of text, I’m afraid.

A few years ago, I briefly worked with a guy who had diabetes. He also looooooved sugar. And he hated pricking his finger to test his blood sugar levels and giving himself insulin shots. These things are understandable when one thinks about them a bit – I also love sugar and I hate it when I prick my finger, and I haaaaate shots..

But, because he had diabetes, these things together meant that he regularly put himself into a medical crisis. He would binge on sugary foods and drinks and wouldn’t do anything to compensate for it. He was in the emergency room about every other week. Everyone who knew him knew that he was going to die from this someday, and it was all very preventable and very tragic.

But nobody – nobody at all – ever suggested that the solution was to throw him into a locked ward and force treatment on him. He came across as completely sane. He was therefore allowed to do self-destructive things as much as he liked and it never crossed anyone’s mind that ripping away his agency was something that ought to be done.

I hope you see where I’m going with this. There is a double standard for how we handle self-destructive behavior, depending on whether a person is (perceived as) mad or not. People who get the “insane” label are treated differently from people who don’t, even if the insane person is fully capable of rational reasoning, and even if the insane person is hurting no one but themselves.

This is not to say that self-destructive behavior needs to be ignored and normalized. What I’m saying is that if we’re going to throw a bipolar person into a locked psyche ward when that person self-harms, we need to ask why we don’t do the same thing for Mr. Diabetes when he self-harms. If you knew and really understood why someone who is in a depressive episode does what they do, you might not find their motives bizarre at all, just as I don’t find Mr. Diabetes’ dislike of needles at all bizarre.

That double standard exists for other aspects of how we treat mad people. I’m lucky, in that my mental illness is relatively easy to conceal from strangers and casual acquaintances. I can “pass” for sane, so I don’t experience that double standard very often. People who have psychoses that make their behavior visibly “off” are not so fortunate.

There’s a reason why mad people are more likely to be homeless: you literally cannot get and hold down a job, even one you’re fully capable of doing, or obtain housing, if you can’t pass for sane. People assume you are dangerous and won’t have anything to do with you, even though insane people are, statistically, less dangerous than sane people. No one would think twice about renting an apartment to someone who looks sane, even though that sane person is more likely to be dangerous than the guy who is constantly mumbling to himself about Jesus and the angels. The mumbling guy might as well not bother applying.

Seeking care for madness can be fraught. If you have a drug problem, but are not a criminal, you can go to get treatment for it and not have to worry much about being kidnapped and held against your will. If you have diabetes, but are not a criminal, you can go to get treatment for it without any worry of being kidnapped and held against your will. If you have schizophrenia, getting treatment for it without being kidnapped and held against your will can be extremely difficult. So what do you do? Do you seek treatment and run that risk, or not? “Not” starts to sound really damned good once you’ve experienced involuntary commitment. Involuntarily commitment is awful. Awful. Even if the facility is well-run and not abusive (and many of them don’t meet these criteria), having all ability to control what you do and where you go stripped from you is awful.

People who are mad and also violent need to be treated as violent, which means we need to look at how we treat other violent offenders and ensure we are being consistent. If we’re going to lock up a mad person for domestic violence (not something I would oppose) then we need to also lock up sane people for domestic violence (something that would be very beneficial in my opinion).

So when you look at someone who is violent and you say, that person must be insane! you are contributing to the idea that violence and madness go together. When you look at someone who is saying something that is irrational and you say, that person is crazy! you are contributing to the idea that irrationality and madness go together.

Someone can be irrational and sane, irrational and mad, rational and sane, or rational and mad. Determining someone’s rationality status doesn’t actually tell you whether or not they are mad, but assuming that all irrational people must be mad stigmatizes mad people. That stigma leads directly to the double standard in how mad people are treated. The same goes for violence.

I haven’t even gotten into the poor medical care that mad people sometimes receive, because doctors assume we are making shit up no matter what we say. Or the horrible way we are treated socially, when acquaintances condescend to us and treat us worse than children. Those things are also important, but this has gotten long enough.