NPR had a story this afternoon about the Icarus Project, a group of people who are trying to reframe mental illness. As their website says, they believe “that when we learn to take care of ourselves, the intertwined threads of madness and creativity can be tools of inspiration and hope in a repressed and damaged world.”
Now God knows the world is damaged, and anything that helps people feel less alienated is good. It’s also true that I can’t speak to the experiences of people with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia: they may in fact experience, or learn to experience, their illness as a “dangerous gift.” But I’ve struggled with clinical (unipolar) depression as long as I can remember, and I could not refer to my depression thus. To the extent that any affliction can be transformed into compassion for others, perhaps, but not in and of itself. Perhaps I’m missing something.
Didn’t have time to read it, but yeah, that seems suspect to me. A part of the greater “everything is good and everyone is beautiful and okay just they way they are” movement. Which has a great impulse behind it, but can sometimes be sloppy with the facts.
Also, what does take care of ourselves mean? Maybe that’s taking medication and doing therapy. In that case, yeah. Mentally ill people often find great power within when they get help. You and I are cases in point.
real live preacher
November 19th, 2007