Recently I watched the film "Control" that narrates the life and suicide of Ian Curtis from Joy Division. Ultimately a tragic story, Curtis' depression, caused by multiple reasons some under his control and some not, was depicted so beautifully that I felt like screaming to the screen: "Can't somebody just give him some Prozac or some SSRI?" After all, they were pumping him with carbamazepine for his epilepsy, surely they could've heard the poor soul out... Finally as he committed suicide I was astounded to hear my friend comment on how selfish an act it was, how idiotic Ian Curtis had been. After all, he was leaving so many people behind... At first a sensible argument that can be brought in from many sides, I found this to be somewhat unemphatic, coming from my friend who was himself prescribed anti-depressants before for his depression. I wondered "why would many people regard another's internal pain with so much reference to the outside's welfare?" When you think about it, everyone always gets left behind some way or another. People come, people go. You come, you go; why do we not wonder more among us, after the suicide has happened, what was it that we DIDN'T DO, that could've helped him? Although most suicides don't place the blame on others, why is it that we are so eager to push the blame on the person who actually suffered and even go as far to play the victim (How could he do this to me?etc.)
why, when the matter is suicide along with metal illness are we so reluctant to stare at the patient with unsympathy? Anti-depressants's are last centuries wonder drug and they re prescribed to anyone who may feel slightly "blue" so there is a loss of credibility on the part of psychiatry, fair enough, however this doesn't make mental illness an un-reality. In fact viewing it this way, it is easy to dismiss illnesses of the mind as meagre caprices, but severe cases do exist and if anything, in their cure can we see the advantages of psychiatry. the stigma that comes along with mental illness doesn't really make things easier. As the patient stumbles deeper into "abnormality", the "normal" ones wallow in their acceptance by this hideously crooked establishment we call society. It is sad to see, even in pharmacies in Turkey, where a simple bandaid purchase is greeted with a "geçmiş olsun", the purchase of pshychiatric drugs are given to the customer with a silent sense of distaste. These two attitudes are exactly the same, and woe be to the utterer to really know the deepest pits of depression, mania, and psychosis. All this stems from the centuries' old cultural discourse of marginalizing the mad. Today, we see a new development in viewing these diseases. Not as an abnormal functioning of the brain but a sort of individually unique defense mechanism of some morbid "normality" the subject is asked to adjust to. In fact, to carry this theory even further, one would assume that the most psychopathic among us, are those who have no problems in blending in with what society offers. Needless to say, I guess most sensible people would rather not be "normalized" to, say, Hitler Germany. So, although it is easy to look down upon someone who suffers for no apparent external reason ("s/he should get on with life just like we do" for example), to do this with a view of the patient spreading misfortune and black bile to others as if it were a cancer cell in society that infects it, is equally damaging to society. For I shouldn't need to remind anyone, but progress in arts, sciences, religions are all laid out by the prodigious and prophetic madpeople of our world. It is the "normals" who usurp and degenerate their vision...
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