Not another nutty idea
The government today struck a committee to help Canadians better understand and eventually destigmatize mental illness. A noble goal. Today the conference on psychosomatic medicine closed at our local convention centre. Bookends. In between, the rest of us.
It starts early. By the time a child enters daycare, he or she has already begun to label those who have “variety” in the behaviour catalogue as crazy, nuts, loony. Pick your word, because you’ll have to learn many to keep up with the enormous spectrum of human action you’ll encounter. By times, you may begin to think you are the only sane one in the room and we all know that’s nuts.
I wish the committee lots of luck on this one. Our whole society lives and breathes labels for the way that others function. That doesn’t begin to touch on other cultures. In fact, it may be a little crazy to think that we’ll stop categorizing. Their hope is bit saner, though. The goal of the Canadian Mental Health Commission is “a national campaign to erase the stigma of mental illness”. People should be no more willing to treat a person with a mental disorder in a different way than someone with hypertension.
Still, when the crazy person at the bus stop gets too close, I may step back and adopt a practice a zenlike avoidance. Anything else would be nuts, if you know what I mean.
