Is Insanity Normal? Essay -- Mental Illness Insane Crazy Norm essays

Is Insanity Normal? Works Cited Missing We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad -The Cheshire Cat from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Have you ever questioned your sanity? Have you ever wished you could change, for even one day, and be the person that others wanted you to be? Have you ever actually made that change, either by choice or by force? Do you think you’re normal? Maybe you’ve lived the most normal life you could imagine. Or maybe not. Maybe you’re life is so abnormal and outrageous that you don’t wish to be normal. Have you ever questioned your sanity? Introduction Insanity appears in various forms and we all know how to mentally picture it. We can create clear images of "insane" individuals in our heads and, very often, feel comfortable with those images. Maybe we picture the serial killer on television, the old woman next door who refuses to leave her house, the people in rubber rooms, or even ourselves. Despite whom we picture, however, we, as members of this society, have a tendency to label those who act differently from us "crazy" or "insane." Society attempts to classify the "sane" and "insane" based on how "normal" or "abnormal" they are. Unfortunately, this forces us into a binary view of individuals that causes many of those individuals to lose their senses of uniqueness and freedom. This also causes others to discriminate based on their differences. What we fail to realize is that the line we establish between "sane" and "insane" is unclear and undeterminable and, therefore, gives us no grounds for bias. For that reason, we must abandon it entirely because the categories it forms inhibit some from living their ideal ways of life. We need to, essentially, stop classifying abn... ...ation. For example, there are Gay and Lesbian Pride groups, Fat Pride groups, the Deaf Community, and so forth, but because the line society draws for insanity is so ambiguous, and clear categories are indeterminable, it is impossible to form an "Insane Pride" group, for instance. The only current option for these people, therefore, is to stay within the binary. We need to find a way to resist this need to conform because, in reality, we all in some way fit into the category of the insane to different degrees. Hence, we need to establish ourselves as individuals with needs. We must begin to look at what we have come to call "insanity" in a new way and, in effect, exclude the word from our vocabulary. If we can, therefore, find some way to eliminate the stigma and reaffirm the spectrum, we will be able to treat others and ourselves affectively and appropriately.