The Psychiatric Ward Taught Me It Can Be OK to Laugh About Mental Illness
The Guardian; Marc Burrows, 4/13/2015
Ten years ago I spent time in a residential psychiatric ward. Not to visit a friend, or as research, but because I was mentally ill and a danger to myself.
Two things become clear when I read my diary from that period. One is that I was an utter state, and the other is that everyday life on the ward was ridiculous, with a cast of characters to match any sitcom. The diary names a lot of them: the Sleeping Chief, the Knitting Lady, Kid Zombie and “Norman Wisdom”. In the next bed along from mine – and I promise I’m not making this up – was a 6ft 6in Native American man, probably because since One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, all psychiatric wards must be issued a giant Native American as standard. Sadly I never saw him throw a concrete water fountain through a window, though I’m sure the shockwaves from his constant, rumbling flatulence must have caused some structural damage to the building.
When I was committed to the ward the assessing doctor said, “You need to know this is going to affect the rest of your life. People will know. This is going to be on your record. Tell me now that you won’t do anything else to endanger yourself and I’ll send you home.” Basically he was saying “Pretend you’re fine and mum’s the word,” which is fine if you are, in fact, fine. I wasn’t, so I didn’t say much and stayed where I was. The next day a semi-circle of important looking men I dubbed “the Jedi council” (because they featured in an episode of my life I’d rather hadn’t happened and one of them looked like Yoda) confirmed my inpatient status and metaphorically and literally the door was locked behind me. Whatever else I would ever be (“writer”, “comedian”, “musician”, “partner”, “friend”) I was now also going to be “former mental patient”. The doctor was right: once you’ve spent time in an establishment like that, once your history of compromised mental health is officialised, it never leaves you – not because anyone really notices (it rarely comes up), but because you know. Like the depression that took me to hospital in the first place, traces of it would always be floating around somewhere.
I’m reminded of my history constantly, because mental illness is a constant in our lives. In the last few weeks there have been the conversations in the wake of the Germanwings tragedy; comments by MPs in the run-up to the election; an excellent documentary by Louis Theroux on secure psychiatric wards in the US; an article about Robin Williams’ suicide; an interview with Brian Harvey from East 17 about his battle with depression; the tragic death of 24-year old singer Chris Hardman after a long struggle with “mental health issues”; the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s suicide; and an episode of I’m Alan Partridge where he has a breakdown and drives to Dundee in his bare feet has turned up on Netflix. We spend our lives swimming through mental illness; we’re bombarded with reminders. I am never allowed to forget that I am part of that story. I’ve had to find ways of coping with that.
I do this by trying to see the funny side. My stint in psychiatric care was marked by the ridiculous. The plastic cutlery and cups, the bright colours, and the constant use of the Comic Sans font, all weirdly infantilised the environment, making it feel like I was back at primary school, only with a chain smoking Hell’s Angel hogging the communal TV. The mirrors were made from single sheets of polished metal and were always warped or slightly bent, meaning your reflection would be distorted like a fairground hall of mirrors. You could have a normal conversation with someone who would suddenly stop and declare “anyway, shut up, you’ll soon learn, when Timbuktu comes to planet earth and Jesus finds you yabbering on! Hah!” and flounce off. It was easier to laugh at this stuff than to consider the reason why the cutlery was plastic and the mirrors had no glass, or ponder the horror playing out behind a patient’s eyes. It was better to listen to the surreal chatter than it was to the screaming.
In hospital humour became a shield. The patients didn’t really speak to one another and there was very little community – people stuck to their own little world. I began to think of the majority of patients on the ward as “the Shufflers,” introverted zombies who couldn’t engage with anything around them, shambling slowly from bed to the smoking lounge, to the kitchen and back. I was terrified I’d become like them, and as the days went by I started to recognise those characteristics in myself: it was so isolating that withdrawal was almost inevitable. Writing about the weird, ridiculous encounters, setting myself little quizzes and challenges and creating characters and back-stories for the patients around me became my way of stopping the zombification process. I began to formulate escape plans, just as an exercise, and started speculating about how I could make a mockery of the ultra-safe preschool environment. – I spent an entire morning trying to set up a scenario where by I could slip on a banana skin, for the sheer ridiculousness of it. I wanted to crack the Shufflers, even at the risk of cracking my skull. Anything to avoid becoming one of them.
I’m comfortable making light of these stories, and not just because I was there and I’ve been through it. I have to laugh, because it’s a better thing to feel than the awful reality of that situation. It’s an in-built defence mechanism in all humans, even the healthy ones; that’s why it only takes about 24 hours after any given celebrity suicide for the massively insensitive jokes to start hitting inboxes. I genuinely don’t begrudge that: realising that our own brains can betray us so completely is a horrible concept to face, and humour becomes a way of taking control of those feelings. But looking for the humour in mental illness and insulting the mentally ill are different things. One helps disperse the stigma, the other propagates it. It’s an important distinction.
In 1998, just months after she attempted to take her life, the comedian Caroline Aherne accepted an award for her show The Royle Family at the British comedy awards. She began her speech by saying, “I’ve been told, whatever you do, don’t mention your suicide attempt.” She took ownership of her tragedy and made it part of her triumph by laughing at it. I understand this completely. When I was admitted to hospital I was given a basic physical exam, and was asked how my hearing was. I replied with “Pardon?” and, on that darkest of nights, considered it a victory for my sanity, though probably not for my comedy career. The doctor told me it wasn’t the time to be cracking jokes. I couldn’t have disagreed more.