Kerrraaazzzzeee People Are Everywhere!

I have sympathy for people who suffer from mental illness. I suppose that a more politically correct way to say it would be "people who experience mental illness" but since I personally struggle with depression, I can assure you that it's not an experience, it is suffering. The last time I went to see a psychologist, he admitted to me privately that mental health professionals are more or less "making it up as they go along" (which reminds me of this) and that "nobody really understands the human brain." While I appreciated his brutal honesty, it wasn't particularly reassuring. And he charged my insurance company $279 to share with me that nugget of truth. (Of course my co-pay was only $20 so what did I care?) On the flipside, when I read stories about how us crazies used to be treated, I can only be grateful that we have what we have. I came across this story from the Village Voice about the sorry lives of patients at a mental hospital in Syracuse, NY during the earlier decades of the last century. The Suitcase Exhibit has some very moving photographs in a companion piece to the VV story. I also stumbled across The Icarus Project. According to their Wikipedia entry, "it is radical mental health movement that advocates that these experiences should be viewed as 'dangerous gifts to be cultivated and taken care of, rather than a disease or disorder to be suppressed or eliminated,' promotes art and creativity as intrinsic to these experiences, envisions radical political change in society as a whole, and includes alternate ways of treatment and care beyond the medical model." Call me crazy (and some have before), but if I correctly recall my Edith Hamilton, didn't Icarus, like, die in the end, covered in melted wax and feathers? That's not how I wanna go out.