To what extent

Finally got my social work visit at the Institute of Mental Health over and done with. It was a mightily depressing place, despite being painted in pink and blue (read: colour of my flat), surrounded by barbed wire at the back, with police vans lined at the car park.

There's the esssay to write, but after a mind numbing 5000 word research paper, I'm not thinking about it just yet.

What struck me most was how authorities can just put people on remand as potentially mentally unsound patients based on unruly behaviour, even when their actions may have just been propelled by the fact that they are humans, with actual emotions. Who defines madness anyway, but people in authority who need a criteria by which they determine their own sanity?

I think we all are mad in certain ways, are even if we aren't, (or so we think) there is an attraction in madness - the total lack of responsibility that comes with it, the lack of the need to conform to a prescribed standard of behaviour.

Even if you're drugged out of your mind, all you have to do is walk around in a mindless haze, which arguably is less painful than living every day with knowledge of the pain that is around you, that people carry everyday behind a smile. Clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia - the list of mental illness gets longer by the day and I think that in itself is comforting, to know that even if you don't belong anywhere, you still have your pigeonhole together with the rest of the other mental patients.