Hey there! Welcome to this blog’s first rant! 🙂 This is something that’s quite personal to me and, for want of a better phrase, just really pisses me off, and that’s the casual use of ‘psychotic’ (and other mental illnesses) as a funny insult on social media and popular slang.
Inspiration: A couple of incredibly important people in my life have a form of psychosis, so I frequently experience first-hand the scary, debilitating effects of the illness, which I won’t shock you with, but very often, they’re enough to make a grown man cry and at the very least, are incredibly disorientating and confusing. (At a basic, medical level, it is described as a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are impaired, resulting in hearing voices or hallucinating.)
Therefore, hearing or seeing people using phrases such as ‘my ex is so psychotic’, or ‘stop acting so psychotic’ really irritates and upsets me because, in a nutshell, it’s wrong, and it’s insensitive. It seems that some people who have not experienced the condition are casually (maybe even unconsciously) substituting the word ‘crazy’ for the word ‘psychotic’ for emphasis. No. Stop. This casual use of language is debilitating to those with the illness, trivialises their condition and even worse, makes it into a joke; that ‘psycho ex’ that the lads joke about.
For example, the famous ‘psychotic girlfriend’ meme:
It only takes a quick google to uncover a plethora of Buzzfeed articles titled cringeworthy things like ‘9 ways to deal with a crazy and psychotic girlfriend’ (THE TWO ARE NOT SYNONYMOUS) and ‘Is my girlfriend really psychotic?’. NO. PROBABLY NOT. UNLESS SHE’S PART OF THE 1% WITH A MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS OR CLEAR SYMPTOMS. *takes a deep breath*
An incredibly worrying recent trend that I’ve noticed is the link between this ill-informed ‘crazy’ psychosis’ and being sexy.
Slogans like this make my blood BOIL. While it is possible to be both, (both of my friends are incredibly sexy), the illness itself is not ‘sexy’, ‘attractive’ or ‘desirable’ – Take it from someone who knows. It’s vulnerable, unpredictable and often scary. Sexualising mental illness in this way is never ok. This is similar to the ‘tormented angels’ suffering with self-harm or anorexia which many (thankfully) now take issue with. So WHY are these offensive T-Shirts still being sold?
It is unfortunate that both ‘psychotic’ and ‘psychopathic’ get shortened to ‘psycho’, which is I think where some confusion arises, but let me simplify. If an ex, a partner, a friend, a fucking cat is being violent and manipulative etc, they may be described as psychopathic. NOT psychotic. They’re two very different things (see the above definition) and to tar both with the same brush is dangerous and ill-informed. You look stupid.
Psychopathy is a different illness with a different set of symptoms that should be treated with equal care and sensitivity. It affects real people who are often able to lead ‘normal’ lives despite how it’s often been portrayed and to use either illness as an insult or a joke is debilitating to already mentally unstable sufferers. If you didn’t previously know the difference, consider yourself educated! Now go out and spread the word because I still think some people don’t get it and are often unaware of the impact these negative connotations have on the sufferers. Psycho is as insensitive to casually fling around as ‘schizo’ or ‘spastic’ for reinforcing negative connotations of mental illness and it’s up to us as a society to censor our speech if we’re really serious about helping those with mental illness.
Sorry for the serious tone of this piece, but hopefully it gives you something to think about, and I’ll be back soon for something either more light-hearted or literary and analytical for you lovely people.
Peace oot x
Hannah Lucy's Literary Adventures 