Looney, Psycho, Wacko, Nut Case, Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

[Guest guest]

Certainly we empathize with anyone experiencing a mental problem.

But NAMI, National Alliance of Mental Illness, a front group for drug

companies, wants to censor our English language because they have a

problem with certain words.

Like - " Crazy " .

Targets of NAMI complaints have ranged from Nestle USA (for Tangy Taffy

flavors such as Psycho Sam) to the Vermont Teddy Bear Co. (makers of a

straitjacketed Crazy for You cub for Valentine's Day).

NAMI had a problem with a group's Halloween " Insanitarium " .

NAMI said the headline a New Jersey newspaper put on a 2002 story about

a fire in a psychiatric hospital " Roasted Nuts " was particularly

unfortunate .

Since NAMI has such a problem with certain words - a quick search was

done to find some of those words. See here: http://tmap.wordpress.com/

Can you add to the list by making a comment?

NAMI says they want to remove the " stigma " associated with the mentally

ill. Could it really be they want to remove anything derogatory about

being nuts - so anyone would then be free and comfortable to be kooky if

they wanted, so they can take more loco pills?

That way more psychiatric drugs can be sold.

Write a letter to the editor: letters@... predictably NAMI will

be all over the below article:

http://www.tampabay.com/features/article545712.ece

St. sburg Times

Seeking asylum from the lunacy of life

By Alison Iglehart

Sunday, June 1, 2008

There's turmoil in Weston, W.Va., over the new name given a former 19th

century mental institution there. Reopening the massive stone Gothic

Revival hospital as a tourist attraction, the new owners have dubbed it

the " Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. "

Some sanctimonious mental health advocates are crying aloud about the

terminology of lunacy.

Seinfeld would say if you're in a lunatic asylum, you may have bigger

problems than what to call the place.

And since no one's even a patient there anymore, can't the rest of us

just call a spade a spade? Or rather, a lunatic asylum, a lunatic

asylum? I like the clarity and honesty of the name.

To my mind, the real lunacy in today's mental health care comes from a

price tag of $917.09 for one month's supply of antipsychotic pills whose

dubious benefit is turning someone into an unfamiliar and unwelcome

someone else. The lunacy also comes from many psychiatrists with more

disturbing hang-ups than their patients. And from today's schizophrenic

treatment facilities, with the benefit of modern neurobiological

psychiatric diagnoses, still using humiliation and dehumanization

techniques from the lunatic asylums of old.

At least, that's how it has been for me.

.. . .

I have been a patient in the mental health system for more than 35

years. Despite my diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder that combines

some of the worst symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, I am

what mental health experts term " high functioning. " I have a master's

degree. I held a longtime professional job.

Here I am, writing this piece.

But like most with mental illness, I'm expected to perform like Shamu at

Sea World: As long as I do what others think I should do on cue, I'm

well. When I don't - when I just want to go cavort with another killer

whale or act goofy rather than perform - then they're on my case, saying

I'm " unstable. "

Now that's lunacy.

By the time I turned 30, I had lived in 25 apartments and held about 30

jobs, some for only hours. The one-two punch of psychiatric disorder and

alcoholism from self-medication prevented me from establishing stability

in work or society.

Finally, on the strength of psychiatric drugs - Thorazine, then Navane,

then Zyprexa, then Seroquel and Lithium - I stabilized, married, had two

children, and kept one professional job for almost 20 years.

While I was making strides professionally and being promoted, I was

turned down for group health insurance due to the medications I was

taking.

Was I losing my mind, or was that a crazy ruling? Did they want me to be

loony?

At 58 years old, I took offense at a note scribbled about me by one

co-worker to another and walked off the job I couldn't remember not

having, never to return. I felt he had betrayed me. No one picked up on

this as paranoia.

Lunatics.

.. . .

I stopped taking my meds a couple of months later and then overdosed on

Vicodin and booze. The next day, I was Baker Acted, meaning an

involuntary, legally enforced 72-hour evaluation in a psychiatric

facility due to being a threat to myself or others.

To get to the facility from the hospital where I had been taken for the

overdose, I was handcuffed behind my back - wearing a skimpy hospital

gown and bare feet - and thrown into the back of an oppressively hot

sheriff's squad car. Unable to hold on, I was tossed around helplessly

as we careened through town.

I wondered how this experience would help me with my sadness.

Lunacy.

My first night in the facility, I was forced to wear old clothes that

did not fit and sit out in the " common room. " I needed to use the

bathroom, and when I opened the unlocked door to the unisex bathroom, I

came face to face with a young man sitting naked on the toilet smiling

and masturbating.

It freaked me out, but who notices when you're a patient at a lunatic

asylum?

" Asylum " - not lunatic - is the crazy word here: It suggests solace,

comfort, consolation.

But I finally got out after a week. I was on the wrong meds, so when my

family took me home, I lost touch with reality. For four days, I did not

eat or know where I was. My family tried to contact my psychiatrist from

the facility, but he wasn't around.

A month later, I read in the local paper that police had apprehended him

wandering around at night outside town, dressed in only his sneakers,

incoherent and searching for a former male patient who he said had

agreed to meet him. Two months later, he was arrested for the same vice.

Lunacy.

.. . .

I know now that after 35 years of psychiatric intervention, inestimable

amounts of time and money spent and enough " patient notes " written on me

to keep several medical transcriptionists in jobs for life, I must be

crazy still to be in the system, still taking my god-awful, ineffective

meds every night, still believing my mental health professionals who

tell me things can get better.

I have to laugh at those who are hung up on the terminology of lunacy.

Open the chute for the killer whales . . . I feel it coming on.

Alison Iglehart is a writer in Tallahassee.

+++

Only 315 signatures needed to reach 27,000 Against TeenScreen.

Petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.html

Video:

[Guest guest]

Certainly we empathize with anyone experiencing a mental problem.

But NAMI, National Alliance of Mental Illness, a front group for drug

companies, wants to censor our English language because they have a

problem with certain words.

Like - " Crazy " .

Targets of NAMI complaints have ranged from Nestle USA (for Tangy Taffy

flavors such as Psycho Sam) to the Vermont Teddy Bear Co. (makers of a

straitjacketed Crazy for You cub for Valentine's Day).

NAMI had a problem with a group's Halloween " Insanitarium " .

NAMI said the headline a New Jersey newspaper put on a 2002 story about

a fire in a psychiatric hospital " Roasted Nuts " was particularly

unfortunate .

Since NAMI has such a problem with certain words - a quick search was

done to find some of those words. See here: http://tmap.wordpress.com/

Can you add to the list by making a comment?

NAMI says they want to remove the " stigma " associated with the mentally

ill. Could it really be they want to remove anything derogatory about

being nuts - so anyone would then be free and comfortable to be kooky if

they wanted, so they can take more loco pills?

That way more psychiatric drugs can be sold.

Write a letter to the editor: letters@... predictably NAMI will

be all over the below article:

http://www.tampabay.com/features/article545712.ece

St. sburg Times

Seeking asylum from the lunacy of life

By Alison Iglehart

Sunday, June 1, 2008

There's turmoil in Weston, W.Va., over the new name given a former 19th

century mental institution there. Reopening the massive stone Gothic

Revival hospital as a tourist attraction, the new owners have dubbed it

the " Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. "

Some sanctimonious mental health advocates are crying aloud about the

terminology of lunacy.

Seinfeld would say if you're in a lunatic asylum, you may have bigger

problems than what to call the place.

And since no one's even a patient there anymore, can't the rest of us

just call a spade a spade? Or rather, a lunatic asylum, a lunatic

asylum? I like the clarity and honesty of the name.

To my mind, the real lunacy in today's mental health care comes from a

price tag of $917.09 for one month's supply of antipsychotic pills whose

dubious benefit is turning someone into an unfamiliar and unwelcome

someone else. The lunacy also comes from many psychiatrists with more

disturbing hang-ups than their patients. And from today's schizophrenic

treatment facilities, with the benefit of modern neurobiological

psychiatric diagnoses, still using humiliation and dehumanization

techniques from the lunatic asylums of old.

At least, that's how it has been for me.

.. . .

I have been a patient in the mental health system for more than 35

years. Despite my diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder that combines

some of the worst symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, I am

what mental health experts term " high functioning. " I have a master's

degree. I held a longtime professional job.

Here I am, writing this piece.

But like most with mental illness, I'm expected to perform like Shamu at

Sea World: As long as I do what others think I should do on cue, I'm

well. When I don't - when I just want to go cavort with another killer

whale or act goofy rather than perform - then they're on my case, saying

I'm " unstable. "

Now that's lunacy.

By the time I turned 30, I had lived in 25 apartments and held about 30

jobs, some for only hours. The one-two punch of psychiatric disorder and

alcoholism from self-medication prevented me from establishing stability

in work or society.

Finally, on the strength of psychiatric drugs - Thorazine, then Navane,

then Zyprexa, then Seroquel and Lithium - I stabilized, married, had two

children, and kept one professional job for almost 20 years.

While I was making strides professionally and being promoted, I was

turned down for group health insurance due to the medications I was

taking.

Was I losing my mind, or was that a crazy ruling? Did they want me to be

loony?

At 58 years old, I took offense at a note scribbled about me by one

co-worker to another and walked off the job I couldn't remember not

having, never to return. I felt he had betrayed me. No one picked up on

this as paranoia.

Lunatics.

.. . .

I stopped taking my meds a couple of months later and then overdosed on

Vicodin and booze. The next day, I was Baker Acted, meaning an

involuntary, legally enforced 72-hour evaluation in a psychiatric

facility due to being a threat to myself or others.

To get to the facility from the hospital where I had been taken for the

overdose, I was handcuffed behind my back - wearing a skimpy hospital

gown and bare feet - and thrown into the back of an oppressively hot

sheriff's squad car. Unable to hold on, I was tossed around helplessly

as we careened through town.

I wondered how this experience would help me with my sadness.

Lunacy.

My first night in the facility, I was forced to wear old clothes that

did not fit and sit out in the " common room. " I needed to use the

bathroom, and when I opened the unlocked door to the unisex bathroom, I

came face to face with a young man sitting naked on the toilet smiling

and masturbating.

It freaked me out, but who notices when you're a patient at a lunatic

asylum?

" Asylum " - not lunatic - is the crazy word here: It suggests solace,

comfort, consolation.

But I finally got out after a week. I was on the wrong meds, so when my

family took me home, I lost touch with reality. For four days, I did not

eat or know where I was. My family tried to contact my psychiatrist from

the facility, but he wasn't around.

A month later, I read in the local paper that police had apprehended him

wandering around at night outside town, dressed in only his sneakers,

incoherent and searching for a former male patient who he said had

agreed to meet him. Two months later, he was arrested for the same vice.

Lunacy.

.. . .

I know now that after 35 years of psychiatric intervention, inestimable

amounts of time and money spent and enough " patient notes " written on me

to keep several medical transcriptionists in jobs for life, I must be

crazy still to be in the system, still taking my god-awful, ineffective

meds every night, still believing my mental health professionals who

tell me things can get better.

I have to laugh at those who are hung up on the terminology of lunacy.

Open the chute for the killer whales . . . I feel it coming on.

Alison Iglehart is a writer in Tallahassee.

+++

Only 315 signatures needed to reach 27,000 Against TeenScreen.

Petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.html

Video:

[Guest guest]

Certainly we empathize with anyone experiencing a mental problem.

But NAMI, National Alliance of Mental Illness, a front group for drug

companies, wants to censor our English language because they have a

problem with certain words.

Like - " Crazy " .

Targets of NAMI complaints have ranged from Nestle USA (for Tangy Taffy

flavors such as Psycho Sam) to the Vermont Teddy Bear Co. (makers of a

straitjacketed Crazy for You cub for Valentine's Day).

NAMI had a problem with a group's Halloween " Insanitarium " .

NAMI said the headline a New Jersey newspaper put on a 2002 story about

a fire in a psychiatric hospital " Roasted Nuts " was particularly

unfortunate .

Since NAMI has such a problem with certain words - a quick search was

done to find some of those words. See here: http://tmap.wordpress.com/

Can you add to the list by making a comment?

NAMI says they want to remove the " stigma " associated with the mentally

ill. Could it really be they want to remove anything derogatory about

being nuts - so anyone would then be free and comfortable to be kooky if

they wanted, so they can take more loco pills?

That way more psychiatric drugs can be sold.

Write a letter to the editor: letters@... predictably NAMI will

be all over the below article:

http://www.tampabay.com/features/article545712.ece

St. sburg Times

Seeking asylum from the lunacy of life

By Alison Iglehart

Sunday, June 1, 2008

There's turmoil in Weston, W.Va., over the new name given a former 19th

century mental institution there. Reopening the massive stone Gothic

Revival hospital as a tourist attraction, the new owners have dubbed it

the " Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. "

Some sanctimonious mental health advocates are crying aloud about the

terminology of lunacy.

Seinfeld would say if you're in a lunatic asylum, you may have bigger

problems than what to call the place.

And since no one's even a patient there anymore, can't the rest of us

just call a spade a spade? Or rather, a lunatic asylum, a lunatic

asylum? I like the clarity and honesty of the name.

To my mind, the real lunacy in today's mental health care comes from a

price tag of $917.09 for one month's supply of antipsychotic pills whose

dubious benefit is turning someone into an unfamiliar and unwelcome

someone else. The lunacy also comes from many psychiatrists with more

disturbing hang-ups than their patients. And from today's schizophrenic

treatment facilities, with the benefit of modern neurobiological

psychiatric diagnoses, still using humiliation and dehumanization

techniques from the lunatic asylums of old.

At least, that's how it has been for me.

.. . .

I have been a patient in the mental health system for more than 35

years. Despite my diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder that combines

some of the worst symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, I am

what mental health experts term " high functioning. " I have a master's

degree. I held a longtime professional job.

Here I am, writing this piece.

But like most with mental illness, I'm expected to perform like Shamu at

Sea World: As long as I do what others think I should do on cue, I'm

well. When I don't - when I just want to go cavort with another killer

whale or act goofy rather than perform - then they're on my case, saying

I'm " unstable. "

Now that's lunacy.

By the time I turned 30, I had lived in 25 apartments and held about 30

jobs, some for only hours. The one-two punch of psychiatric disorder and

alcoholism from self-medication prevented me from establishing stability

in work or society.

Finally, on the strength of psychiatric drugs - Thorazine, then Navane,

then Zyprexa, then Seroquel and Lithium - I stabilized, married, had two

children, and kept one professional job for almost 20 years.

While I was making strides professionally and being promoted, I was

turned down for group health insurance due to the medications I was

taking.

Was I losing my mind, or was that a crazy ruling? Did they want me to be

loony?

At 58 years old, I took offense at a note scribbled about me by one

co-worker to another and walked off the job I couldn't remember not

having, never to return. I felt he had betrayed me. No one picked up on

this as paranoia.

Lunatics.

.. . .

I stopped taking my meds a couple of months later and then overdosed on

Vicodin and booze. The next day, I was Baker Acted, meaning an

involuntary, legally enforced 72-hour evaluation in a psychiatric

facility due to being a threat to myself or others.

To get to the facility from the hospital where I had been taken for the

overdose, I was handcuffed behind my back - wearing a skimpy hospital

gown and bare feet - and thrown into the back of an oppressively hot

sheriff's squad car. Unable to hold on, I was tossed around helplessly

as we careened through town.

I wondered how this experience would help me with my sadness.

Lunacy.

My first night in the facility, I was forced to wear old clothes that

did not fit and sit out in the " common room. " I needed to use the

bathroom, and when I opened the unlocked door to the unisex bathroom, I

came face to face with a young man sitting naked on the toilet smiling

and masturbating.

It freaked me out, but who notices when you're a patient at a lunatic

asylum?

" Asylum " - not lunatic - is the crazy word here: It suggests solace,

comfort, consolation.

But I finally got out after a week. I was on the wrong meds, so when my

family took me home, I lost touch with reality. For four days, I did not

eat or know where I was. My family tried to contact my psychiatrist from

the facility, but he wasn't around.

A month later, I read in the local paper that police had apprehended him

wandering around at night outside town, dressed in only his sneakers,

incoherent and searching for a former male patient who he said had

agreed to meet him. Two months later, he was arrested for the same vice.

Lunacy.

.. . .

I know now that after 35 years of psychiatric intervention, inestimable

amounts of time and money spent and enough " patient notes " written on me

to keep several medical transcriptionists in jobs for life, I must be

crazy still to be in the system, still taking my god-awful, ineffective

meds every night, still believing my mental health professionals who

tell me things can get better.

I have to laugh at those who are hung up on the terminology of lunacy.

Open the chute for the killer whales . . . I feel it coming on.

Alison Iglehart is a writer in Tallahassee.

+++

Only 315 signatures needed to reach 27,000 Against TeenScreen.

Petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.html

Video:

[Guest guest]

Certainly we empathize with anyone experiencing a mental problem.

But NAMI, National Alliance of Mental Illness, a front group for drug

companies, wants to censor our English language because they have a

problem with certain words.

Like - " Crazy " .

Targets of NAMI complaints have ranged from Nestle USA (for Tangy Taffy

flavors such as Psycho Sam) to the Vermont Teddy Bear Co. (makers of a

straitjacketed Crazy for You cub for Valentine's Day).

NAMI had a problem with a group's Halloween " Insanitarium " .

NAMI said the headline a New Jersey newspaper put on a 2002 story about

a fire in a psychiatric hospital " Roasted Nuts " was particularly

unfortunate .

Since NAMI has such a problem with certain words - a quick search was

done to find some of those words. See here: http://tmap.wordpress.com/

Can you add to the list by making a comment?

NAMI says they want to remove the " stigma " associated with the mentally

ill. Could it really be they want to remove anything derogatory about

being nuts - so anyone would then be free and comfortable to be kooky if

they wanted, so they can take more loco pills?

That way more psychiatric drugs can be sold.

Write a letter to the editor: letters@... predictably NAMI will

be all over the below article:

http://www.tampabay.com/features/article545712.ece

St. sburg Times

Seeking asylum from the lunacy of life

By Alison Iglehart

Sunday, June 1, 2008

There's turmoil in Weston, W.Va., over the new name given a former 19th

century mental institution there. Reopening the massive stone Gothic

Revival hospital as a tourist attraction, the new owners have dubbed it

the " Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. "

Some sanctimonious mental health advocates are crying aloud about the

terminology of lunacy.

Seinfeld would say if you're in a lunatic asylum, you may have bigger

problems than what to call the place.

And since no one's even a patient there anymore, can't the rest of us

just call a spade a spade? Or rather, a lunatic asylum, a lunatic

asylum? I like the clarity and honesty of the name.

To my mind, the real lunacy in today's mental health care comes from a

price tag of $917.09 for one month's supply of antipsychotic pills whose

dubious benefit is turning someone into an unfamiliar and unwelcome

someone else. The lunacy also comes from many psychiatrists with more

disturbing hang-ups than their patients. And from today's schizophrenic

treatment facilities, with the benefit of modern neurobiological

psychiatric diagnoses, still using humiliation and dehumanization

techniques from the lunatic asylums of old.

At least, that's how it has been for me.

.. . .

I have been a patient in the mental health system for more than 35

years. Despite my diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder that combines

some of the worst symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, I am

what mental health experts term " high functioning. " I have a master's

degree. I held a longtime professional job.

Here I am, writing this piece.

But like most with mental illness, I'm expected to perform like Shamu at

Sea World: As long as I do what others think I should do on cue, I'm

well. When I don't - when I just want to go cavort with another killer

whale or act goofy rather than perform - then they're on my case, saying

I'm " unstable. "

Now that's lunacy.

By the time I turned 30, I had lived in 25 apartments and held about 30

jobs, some for only hours. The one-two punch of psychiatric disorder and

alcoholism from self-medication prevented me from establishing stability

in work or society.

Finally, on the strength of psychiatric drugs - Thorazine, then Navane,

then Zyprexa, then Seroquel and Lithium - I stabilized, married, had two

children, and kept one professional job for almost 20 years.

While I was making strides professionally and being promoted, I was

turned down for group health insurance due to the medications I was

taking.

Was I losing my mind, or was that a crazy ruling? Did they want me to be

loony?

At 58 years old, I took offense at a note scribbled about me by one

co-worker to another and walked off the job I couldn't remember not

having, never to return. I felt he had betrayed me. No one picked up on

this as paranoia.

Lunatics.

.. . .

I stopped taking my meds a couple of months later and then overdosed on

Vicodin and booze. The next day, I was Baker Acted, meaning an

involuntary, legally enforced 72-hour evaluation in a psychiatric

facility due to being a threat to myself or others.

To get to the facility from the hospital where I had been taken for the

overdose, I was handcuffed behind my back - wearing a skimpy hospital

gown and bare feet - and thrown into the back of an oppressively hot

sheriff's squad car. Unable to hold on, I was tossed around helplessly

as we careened through town.

I wondered how this experience would help me with my sadness.

Lunacy.

My first night in the facility, I was forced to wear old clothes that

did not fit and sit out in the " common room. " I needed to use the

bathroom, and when I opened the unlocked door to the unisex bathroom, I

came face to face with a young man sitting naked on the toilet smiling

and masturbating.

It freaked me out, but who notices when you're a patient at a lunatic

asylum?

" Asylum " - not lunatic - is the crazy word here: It suggests solace,

comfort, consolation.

But I finally got out after a week. I was on the wrong meds, so when my

family took me home, I lost touch with reality. For four days, I did not

eat or know where I was. My family tried to contact my psychiatrist from

the facility, but he wasn't around.

A month later, I read in the local paper that police had apprehended him

wandering around at night outside town, dressed in only his sneakers,

incoherent and searching for a former male patient who he said had

agreed to meet him. Two months later, he was arrested for the same vice.

Lunacy.

.. . .

I know now that after 35 years of psychiatric intervention, inestimable

amounts of time and money spent and enough " patient notes " written on me

to keep several medical transcriptionists in jobs for life, I must be

crazy still to be in the system, still taking my god-awful, ineffective

meds every night, still believing my mental health professionals who

tell me things can get better.

I have to laugh at those who are hung up on the terminology of lunacy.

Open the chute for the killer whales . . . I feel it coming on.

Alison Iglehart is a writer in Tallahassee.

+++

Only 315 signatures needed to reach 27,000 Against TeenScreen.

Petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.html

Video: