Mental Health

One of the great contributing factors to mental illness is the idea that we should at all costs and at all times be well. We suffer far more than we should because of how long it can take many of us until we allow ourselves to fall properly and usefully ill. In a crisis, our chances of getting better rely to a significant extent on having the right relationship to our illness. An attitude which is relatively unfrightened by our distress, which isn't overly in love with the idea of seeming at all times normal, which can allow us to be deranged for a while in order one day to reach a more authentic kind of sanity. It will help us immensely in this quest if the images of mental illness we can draw on at this time do not narrowly imply that our ailment is merely a freakish and pitiable possibility, if we can appeal to images that tease out the universal and dignified themes of our state so that we do not, on top of everything else, have to fear and hate ourselves for being unwell.