Talking Sense   |   Glad to be Mad   |   Messages of Support

Out of the bin and Glad to be Mad

Commentary by Jonathan Freedland

From an article first published in the Guardian, Wednesday January 21st 1998 Reprinted at the MAD PRIDE site with permission.

One group in the country has fewer rights than the rest of us. No one listens to what they say, they are mocked in harsh, ugly language and some can't even vote. They can be discriminated against at work and locked up even when they have committed no crime. Comedians joke about them and now the Government is set to erode their liberty yet further. They are the mentally ill and their anger is growing – driving what could become Britain's next great movement for civil rights.   Frank Dobson catalysed the latest surge of activity, apparently announcing in the Daily Telegraph that dangerous patients released under the care in the community programme would go back to institutions, where they could no longer make a noisy or violent nuisance of themselves.   Those alarmed by the spate of murders committed by discharged schizophrenics – of which the 1992 stabbing of Jonathan Zito by Christopher Clunis is the best-known example – have greeted the Dobson idea warmly. They've had enough of "nutters on the loose" either killing random passers-by or shouting and screaming in the high street. No one wants such unfortunates sent back to the ball-and-chain asylums of the Dickensian past – but if they can be got out of the way, we'd all be much happier. Besides it's for their own good.   That seems to be Mr Dobson's thinking, but the movement of "users" of mental health services begs to differ. They disagree on the specifics of care in the community but they go further – challenging the entire canon of received wisdom on mental illness. Spend an afternoon with some of their most energetic advocates, and the prejudices fall away.   Start with the scary statistic that someone is killed by a mental patient every fortnight. It sound like confirmation of the psycho-killer myth – but it hardly survives scrutiny. For the roughly two dozen homicides by mental patients are a tiny fraction of the nearly 700 murders in Britain every year. Tabloid tales of "crazed killers" are statistical flam, designed to tap into a deep and ancient fear of the lunatic mad, bad and dangerous.   But that approach will take money – enough to fund perhaps 400 homes for the 5,000 people deemed a danger to themselves or others. More deeply, it will require a complete change in the way we think about mental illness – as profound a shift as society has made in its view of women or blacks or gays.   First it is not "them" but us. Figures cited by the Audit Commisssion show around one in four Britons consulting their GP over mental or emotional distress with one in 10 held to have a recognised mental health problem.   Those in serious trouble can enter a Kafka-esque spiral, in which a diagnosis becomes true just because it's been made; once branded a schizophrenic a patients cannot object or resist treatment -–after all she or he is now a nutter. Next they might be pumped full of drugs with grotesque side-effects so that if they weren't mad before, they soon seem it. The "user" can say nothing. Branded as a mental patient he is no longer a credible witness – even about his own mind.   The diagnosis becomes a mark of Cain, a bar to personal relationships and employment. The "user" often ends up destitute and alone, with little hope for the future. Depression sets in, with suicide the frequent result – as many as 1,000 a year. What might have begun as a highly understandable problem – a bereaved patient hearing the voice of their dead child, for instance, becomes a "symptom", then a diagnosis and untimately a death sentence.   When one hears the personal stories of the mentally ill, one soon realises why they and their families speak of "survivors" or "chemical imprisonment". Once drawn into the system, it can be impossible to break free.   It's no wonder that a kind of liberation movement has arisen, determined to assert its rights. "Users" argue that we have moved beyond blaming all Black people for the actions of the odd black criminal, yet we still punish all the mentally ill for the violence of a few. We no longer tolerate headlines about "yids" or "niggers" yet "psycho is still acceptable. We allow cancer patients to refuse treatment yet we wave aside those whose illness in not in the body, but the mind.   Like the best civil rights campaigns, some "users" celebrate the very source of their oppression – insisting that their condition is not an affliction but a blessing. Simon Barnett, the current chair of Survivors Speak Out, signs his letters Glad to be Mad – just as gays reclaimed the word queer. He has set about organising a Mad Pride rally modeled on Gay Pride. Last year saw an effort to "reclaim Bedlam".   All this has happened while the rest of us have been stuck in the old thinking about nutcases and weirdos. The lunatics have not yet taken over the asylum – but they are raising their voice.