Something that scares me
This is a very personal post and I want to put a warning up front. This post is going to talk about my own experience with mental health facilities in the 1980s and contains talk about what it was like. You have been warned. I am currently watching a youtube video about the history of Insane Asylums in Horror Movies from the channel In Praise of Shadows.
And it has reminded me of something from my own past. Something that still impacts me to this day. In 1987, I was 12 years old in 7th Grade as Will James Junior High School in Billings, Montana. I was not a popular kid. I was awkward, had geeky interests when that was definitely not an accepted thing and was completely obsessed with Star Trek. I was mercilessly mocked, called stupid by one of my teachers for not being able to grasp basic algebra and had a few emotional outbursts. I also got into Edgar Allen Poe at the time and began to write some pretty dark poetry about death, inspired by his tales and verse. My Mom became convinced that meant I was suicidal. So, not knowing what to do with a child like me, my parents consulted with my therapist and they decided to have me institutionalized. I was sent to Rivendell, a juvenile psychiatric facility in Billings. There, all of my personal possessions and clothes were taken from me and I was given a pair of red sweats and introduced to my ‘Family’. The kids who were being treated there were divided into three, color-coded families Red, Yellow and Blue. You were forbidden from speaking to anyone from a different colored family. Every moment of every day was monitored, scheduled and controlled. At meal times you were given whatever was being served and you had to eat it all, even if you really did not like it or you would be punished. I still hate broccoli to this day for this reason. This was a place filled with heavily medicated kids working through some pretty serious issues. Some, like myself, were committed by their parents, others were sent there by court orders. They apparently didn’t check if anyone had connections to other patients either. One of my Red Team Family Members was an older teen names Jay. Jay had been my older sister’s best friend’s boyfriend. She tried to break up with him but her broke into our house while she was spending the night and kidnapped here. My sister was the one who called the cops on him which lead him to being committed to Rivendell until he was old enough to be transferred to the adult mental facility. Fortunately, he was drugged enough to never figure out who I was. The biggest problem for me was this place was designed to crush imagination, to enforce conformity and prevent deviance. It seemed ok at times but then some kid would end up strapped to their bed screaming all night while their roommate had to go to another room. I was released from that place after three months when the staff decided there was nothing they could do for me and I was just a kid who liked morbid stories and science fiction a lot. I still sometimes have nightmares about that place. It may also be a reason it took me so long to come to grips with my own gender identity and my own sexuality. Aside form a lot of ingrained Catholic guilt and hangups about sex, I was terrified if my parents ever found out, they would attempt to have me institutionalized again. I know this is impossible to do to an adult but I hear the horror stories about ‘Conversion Therapy’ and it brings up memories of kids strapped to beds or drugged into zombie-like submission and it triggers a primal terror I hate to try and deal with. I know modern mental health facilities are not like Rivendell (which was eventually shut down for negligence and reports of abuse) and actually try and help people. My current therapist is an amazing person who has really helped me come to grips with a lot of this It never really makes the memories go away though. It never entirely removes the feelings of betrayal from the people who I thought cared about me but I came to believe just wanted to have me dealt with for a while by someone else (my relationship with my very religious parents is complicated at best) so they could get on with their lives. Nothing was ever as bas as you see in most horror movies. The closest thing I can see in a movie is the Westin Hills Hospital in A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (minus the evil dream killer and minus the predatory staff members) where kids meet for a lot of group therapy and take a lot of meds. That’s why that movie speaks to me and ironically came out while I was institutionalized. I really hate that mental illness is viewed so negatively in horror movies, dehumanizes those experiencing it, casts them as monsters and villains when more often they are the victims. But whenever health, especially mental health, becomes more about business and money than about treating patients, abuse runs rampant and it hurts the very people it was meant to help. I am not even sure why I am writing this but I just needed to get it off my chest. Thanks for reading it. Oh and I had no idea when I went there where Rivendell got its name until I read the Lord of the Rings many years later.
This is a lovely, honest bit of writing. I was hospitalized against my will in 2015 for only a WEEK and it destroyed my life. The 7th anniversary passed this year and I slept easily for the first time in 7 years. I'm trying to be more open about it, but heavy shame and fear of judgment keep me from mentioning it. I'm a huge advocate for transparency about mental health and therapy because I never want anyone to experience what I experienced. I've also become OBSESSED with healing and self-actualization - I never want my feelings to be a mystery ever again. It's like that tumblrism - "you become the person who would have saved you." I have definitely become the person that Then-Corinna needed to step in and help.
Anyway, I love this post because I have ALWAYS had a problem with the way insanity, and by extension asylums, are presented in shows and games. I will die on the hill that it's lazy and does mega-damage to public knowledge/opinion of mental health AND those living with mental illness. It's a convenient mechanic, sure - suddenly anything is on the table because INSANITY! But this frames insanity as uncontrollable, impossible to understand, scary, often contagious, with no traceable origin or trajectory. It dismisses an entire section of our lived experience (and a whole ass section of SCIENCE) as scary, untrustworthy, and to-be-avoided, which is ALWAYS a fertile breeding ground for misinformation, stigmas, and hate. This trickles down to our view of mental health, because insanity and mental health are obviously linked 🤓 So while a movie about an insane person doing wacky, scary things because they just "snapped" one day with no explanation is a thrill, it might become part of what informs someone's choice to have you wrongfully hospitalized because they've just learned to be terrified and ashamed of all things mental health due to what they've been told and what they've absorbed through stories and games.
This also helps frame those with mental illnesses as incapable of rational thought, which is a pretty handy way to dehumanize someone you don't want to help. Once they're dehumanized, you don't have to help or understand them, you simply do what you believe is best for them even if it violates their autonomy. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
Side note: There's no "insane" diagnosis listed in the DSM! The concept of insanity is mostly legal these days, used to indicate that someone does not understand right from wrong and is therefore not mentally competent to stand trial. You mostly find "insanity" in Lovecraft and ye olde legal system because "insanity" makes no sense in the face of modern psychology - we have way better, far more nuanced words and diagnoses now! Using "insanity" as a chaotic or comedic blunt force tool in media pumps out that negative viewpoint at high volume and suppresses real, valuable information about mental health.
I still get a little hyped up when I think about my experience or when I read about someone else's - that's probably what prompted me to bang out this post. If you made it this far and this viewpoint is newer to you, all I'm asking is that you think consciously about the choices you make when creating. If you're going to punch down with a punchline or plot point, ask yourself why? If that community or group is already struggling, why are you adding to the chorus of people shitting on them? Can you do something kinder? Something more joyful? Something more productive?
Yeah, you can. We definitely can.