A Sociological Perspective On Mental Illness In America

As you would imagine, the management of HealthyPlace rewards me handsomely for penning Funny In The Head which weekly tickles America and beyond with a droll mélange of insouciance, absurdity, and je ne sais quoi, whatever that is. This lavish remuneration has enabled me to purchase a weekend house on the Cape, a weekend cape for wearing around the house, and a meticulously restored 1933 Hispano-Suiza J12 cabriolet. Well and good, you say, but man cannot survive exclusively on dessert!

Your point is well made. Despite the almost embarrassing tsunami of wealth bestowed by the Internet’s leading, (and most decorated), mental health website, I must, on occasion, venture out into what I shall refer to as – the valley of the shadow of K-Mart - in order to supplement my income and pay for the mundane necessities of life such as spats, plimsolls, and Fred Astaire biographies. Like so many writers before me, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Dylan Thomas, and Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry, to name just the most universally familiar, I take to the lecture circuit where I beat my gums, and remaining teeth, in hopes of drumming up revenue.

Recently, the Party Planning Committee at Chumley Fortesque Memorial Community College invited me to deliver my bread and butter lecture, “Why You So Messed Up, Man?” I accepted. A bright-eyed assemblage of students still clutching desperately onto the concept of upward mobility, and several inebriated janitors ducking responsibilities, filled the dingy lunchroom, which had been hastily rearranged to serve as an auditorium. I gave it my best. When I was through, an eager audience member asked the now-familiar question which seems to hound me wherever I go, as if I had just escaped from Leavenworth.

“Mr. McHarg,” he ventured, “why are there so many mentally ill people in the United States? Where do they come from?”

By now, I am accustomed to this question, although still appalled by what its mere existence says about our educational system. And so, in measured tones masking my impatience and disappointment, I began what has become the canned response.

“America,” I gazed beyond the tops of my reading glasses for effect, fairly oozing disingenuous gravitas, “is a nation built on immigration. We are all familiar with how, fleeing starvation brought about by the potato famine, destitute Irish families landed on our rugged shores in search of work. Our forefathers themselves fled religious persecution and sarcastic remarks. Soon the Italians arrived because it became obvious that there needed to be a pizza parlor on every corner; the fledgling nation was being unified by a love of freedom, ambition, and a hearty appetite for pepperoni.

Then came the great Whackadoomian Emigration of double-ought, where mentally ill individuals throughout the world packed their meager belongings into imaginary suitcases and swam toward Lady Liberty’s beacon – treading water during the day when the beacon was unlit. In America they hoped to find the chance to be unhinged in a way that was marketable, which led ultimately to reality TV. Quietly, in small communities throughout the land, they built pockets of whackadoomiousness, and flourished.

From Knothead, Maine to Improbability, Tennessee, and Not All There, Wyoming, mentally ill Americans worked, fell in love, formed families, prospered and polished up the hood ornament on the American dream just like the rest of us. Today, they are in our midst, virtually everywhere, woven deep within the warp and woof of the American flag; indeed, as you watch the stars and stripes wave you can almost hear the sound of barking.