Why “mental health care” and the arts conflict

Art students are praised for originality. Mental patients are praised for uniformity.

Art students are praised for taking risks. Mental patients are told that risk-taking is a disease.

Artists are praised for hard work and discipline. Mental patients are told that working hard and excelling is workaholism.

Musicians and dancers are encouraged to practice. Mental patients are told that repetition is obsessive-compulsive.

Actors work hard to learn to perform fearlessly. If a mental patient does this, it’s called “delusions of grandeur.”

Most artists, when inspired, work harder. Mental patients are told that inspiration is “mania.”

Artists love deeply. Mental patients are told they are incapable of depth of feeling, or that depth of feeling is a disease treatable by Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

Every artist, musician, and writer knows that art is made by humans and that perfection is not the goal. Mental patients are, on one hand, criticized for perfectionism, and on the other, told they must adhere to their treatment plans 100%.

In art, process, structure, and content are one. In MH “care,” most patients are told they are incapable of processing anything. We are told we need to blindly adhere to someone else’s idea of “structure” since otherwise, we will fall apart. We are fed content that someone else decided for us, some highly paid “expert.” All thought outside the realm of that content is censored.

Artists convey a message. Mental patients who do that are condemned for “interfering with the treatment plans of others.”

Every work of art has a beginning, middle, and end. Mental slavery, by diagnostic definition, is forever, and will never be cured.

The artist puts his brush down. The writer rests her pen. Mental slavery is continuous, since diagnosis is said to be ever-present.

The study of the arts means learning new things and discovering who you are. Mental health “care” means they obliterate who you are. You do not experience self-discovery. You only learn just how little they expect of you.

Dump the shrinks. Make art. And love.