The Incoherence and Cruelty of Mental Illness as Meme

Here’s what we’ve done with mental health in the popular American consciousness in the span of a few years. Created a pleasant series of lies about mental illness such that it is defined as a set of attractive and romantic quirks which do nothing to stop someone from participating in public life as a savvy and politically correct person. Defined any behavior that is genuinely ugly or unpalatable or against contemporary social-political norms as therefore necessarily not the product of mental illness. Excused the people who comfortably fit in the former category from essentially any of the work of adult life, and insisted that expecting such people to still do that work is “stigma.” Removed the basic social protections we had in place for people who were guilty of the latter types of behavior, under the theory that “mental illness doesn’t do that,” with “that” meaning “anything not approved by social media users.” So it’s a great time to be an upwardly-mobile Swarthmore graduate with a

Here’s what we’ve done with mental health in the popular American consciousness in the span of a few years. Created a pleasant series of lies about mental illness such that it is defined as a set of attractive and romantic quirks which do nothing to stop someone from participating in public life as a savvy and politically correct person. Defined any behavior that is genuinely ugly or unpalatable or against contemporary social-political norms as therefore necessarily not the product of mental illness. Excused the people who comfortably fit in the former category from essentially any of the work