Mental Health Awareness Month Day 28.
When we call people crazy, we justify ignoring, avoiding, and dehumanizing them.
We see someone talking to themselves pacing back and forth in public. We call them crazy. Someone tells us they see things that aren’t really there. We call them crazy. Someone screams bloody murder as though they’re dying and we see no blood or sign of injury. We call them crazy. We see someone on the street who clearly hasn’t showered in a while. We call them crazy.
It’s easier to call them crazy and pretend they aren’t real than to acknowledge they are just as human as we are. Because if they are the same as us, then we worry that what has happened to them could happen to us. As long as they’re “crazy”, we will never be like them. If we see them as human, we feel obligated to not let them suffer.
The first time I was hospitalized I spent my first night with anyone and everyone. The next morning someone accused me of refusing to let a tech take my vitals. I was shocked. I tried to say it wasn’t me, but they weren’t convinced. Soon they realized they had mistaken me for a woman named Christine. (My name is Chris-tin-A. That is NOT the same as Christine.) Her hair was unkempt. She would yell, resist the techs/doctors, and say strange things. I was SUPER offended because she seemed “crazy” to me. How could they get us confused. Because clearly I was NOT crazy. I learned that Christine was detoxing. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through. Her behavior seemed so abnormal that I had labeled her as “crazy”. But maybe the only difference between me and her was her addiction to drugs.
Later that day, I was moved to a different floor with patients more like me. I was surprised to learn that pretty much everyone I met who was hospitalized, with the exception of Christine, was normal. I was so shocked. I had spent my entire life thinking that mental/psychiatric hospitals were full of crazy/psycho people. But they weren’t.
I am aware there is a medical definition of crazy. But the majority of humans don’t fall into that category. Even if they are technically “crazy”, that doesn’t make them any less human than us. It doesn’t make them less deserving of all the things we all need and want. And it doesn’t justify us treating them worse than we would treat those we consider “normal”.
We need to label and judge others less. We need to be more loving and caring. People aren’t as crazy as we think. There is much more to their story than the eye can see. #heber #crazypeople #crazy #weallwantthesamethings #weareallhuman #wearealldeserving #namecalling #judgenot #youneverknow #mentalillness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthawarenessmonth #mentalhealthinthetimeofcorona #coronavirus #covid19 #corona2020 #letsbereal #31in31at31 #agamutofgrey #lifeisbeautiful #may2020 5.28.20
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