Mentalcase

Depression is sweeping the nations, if the U.N. is to be believed. A newly recognised type of bi-polar disorder has been added to the DSM-IV (Bi-Polar 2, where the manic episodes aren't so manic...). Crime is frequently pathogenic, leaving victims suffering dibilitating side-affects of PTSD. Schizophrenia, psychosis, anxiety disorders, OCD... Everyone is crazy. Apparently mental illness is the biggest cause of disability in the USA. I wouldn't be surprised if it's similar here.

By the way, I'm as crazy as the rest of you with my bouts of rage, depression and sleepless nights.

Or are we all just victims of a society so individualised, so pathologised, that we can't handle simple pressures of life without giving it a medical explanation? Do the mental health services (let alone the pharmaceutical industry!) fool their way into business by convincing us and themselves of their importance? The 'therapeutic state' as it is known...

Culture differences are there to be seen - some commentators simply could not believe that the local population were mentally stable after the tsunami struck...

"One mental health specialist, reporting live on radio from a Sri Lankan village, expressed his surprise that the children he encountered seemed keener to return to school than talk about their experiences. They were, he told the listeners, 'clearly in denial', and 'only later will they experience the full emotional horror of what has happened to them.' How he knew this was not stated." (from a BMJ book review)

Cultures are different. Our broken legs look the same, but our mental status cannot. Psychiatry is perhaps 90% in the mind, 10% the brain, and so our mental status is massively influenced by our upbringing, our affluence etc. Our ways of coping with trauma and stress are very different - evidence, some argue, that we in the West are dangerously medicalizing our society. We have lost the role of community, common goals, maybe even religion, in getting through the tough times that life always throws our way and in our recovery from traumatic events.

Of course, it should go without saying, that some people are in need of mental health care, and they should get it.

Anti-psychiatry

The Cinema Experience

Don’t download poor quality movies - pay for the bad experience at your local cinema.

Apparently one of the cinema screens at The Odyssey has been revamped. Now each member of the audience can sit back and relax into their own lazy-boy leather seat and order drinks through the waiter service. Hopefully the sound and picture are well presented as well. I mean, when you pay big bucks for that kind of treatment, it better be good.

Surely it should always be at least half decent. Last year I vowed never to return to Enniskillen’s Omniplex until they sorted their shit out. In four consecutive visits I was disappointed one way or another - picture out of focus, sound desperately quiet, hissing/crackling speakers… Call me grumpy, but when I pay five quid to see a film, I want it to be enjoyable. Ideally I would like to be overcome by the film, without a thought for the outside world. But that’s just never the case. And no, I don’t want to miss some of the film to tell the morons to get it together - that’s their job.

At Yorkgate last night I saw ‘Flags of our Fathers’. I won’t comment on the film ‘cause this is rant about the cinema experience. The bloody thing was out of focus. This time, someone even mentioned the problem to a member of staff who was milling about in the theatre. But they still failed to fix it. What does it take? And even if they nailed the picture perfectly, I’m sure the place didn’t have surround sound, the screen was tiny, and, yeah while I’m at it, the seats were a bit cramped. :)

I think I know why it’s all so duff. The cinema going public here don’t care. At the first sign the film was over, the masses of Belfast scrapped and yelped their way to the doors, missing what I thought was a revealing series of photos from some old WW2 archives. And the bloody brooms and rubbish bags came in while we remained, creeping around behind us, basically urging us to leave the theatre. So much for getting lost in the film. This crap wouldn’t go down in America!