Congratulations On Your New Diagnosis! (Greeting Cards for People With Mental Problems)

Good collaboration. A good piece.

Wow. I love the second one. This is fabulous.*

As a therapist, it seems cruel. Also inaccurate. All the personalities would have different birthdays based on the trauma that caused them. Not funny to me. I've just seen too much suffering. Would you joke about breast cancer?

Mental "problems" are MEDICAL ILLNESSES.

Gloria there isn't much I don't joke about.

The people who are out to get me are real, damn it! Ha ha. Just kidding. This wonderful. A+ Star

You joke about cancer? That's no excuse. There's real discrimination against mental illness as a real illness. You have no idea the trouble they have getting medical coverage. This is in really bad taste and promotes discriminations. Black people are really funny. Jewish people are stingy. Ha, ha, ha.

You three writers are so out of the times. You have no clue what's going on in the mental health world. That's not funny. It's stupid and ignorant. Laughing at dumb blacks. Ha, ha, ha.

Oh, people who lose limbs in war are REALLLY FUNNY.

ROZ, I'm sure you have your own mental problem: Asperger's?

The most violent element in society is ignorance: Martin Luther King

Some good ones in here, Roz.

Is there a greeting card for control freak? I'd like to buy one, please.

This is funny, Roz.

This is sadistic and non-compassionate sally.

This week's NY Times:

Suicide Rates Rise Sharply in U.S.
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Published: May 2, 2013 966 Comments

Suicide rates among middle-aged Americans have risen sharply in the past decade, prompting concern that a generation of baby boomers who have faced years of economic worry and easy access to prescription painkillers may be particularly vulnerable to self-inflicted harm.
Related
Health Guide: Suicide and Suicidal Behavior
Readers’ Comments
What factors do you believe are contributing to the rising suicide rate?
Read All Comments (966) »
More people now die of suicide than in car accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the findings in Friday’s issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. In 2010 there were 33,687 deaths from motor vehicle crashes and 38,364 suicides.

Suicide has typically been viewed as a problem of teenagers and the elderly, and the surge in suicide rates among middle-aged Americans is surprising.

Still laughing?

FYI: Baby boomer suicide rates are going up according to the NY TIMES. It's all about mental anguish.

I see no mean-spiritedness here, simply one of many valid forms of expression regarding this subject matter.

One doesn't have to be mean-spirited to do damage which I know Roz did not intend, but we all need to be very sensitive to these issues. I know Roz is a good person at heart but that doesn't make such "joking" any less dangerous.

Everyone needs education that mental illness is no longer an appropriate laughing matter as it was in the dark ages.

So the question remains then, Gloria - what is appropriate matter for humor?

La vita è bella (Life Is Beautiful), a remarkable film by Roberto Benigni and Rod Dean, is set in a death camp - yet is filled with necessary humor. Some viewers may find the film in bad taste. For me, it's a marvelous work of art.

The same could be said of Mel Brooks' films.

A couple of your comments here - "ROZ, I'm sure you have your own mental problem: Asperger's?" - would be better suited for a private message.

There's a line from Groucho Marx that fits with this piece by Roz, et al ... as well as the film by Benigni and Dean: “The only real laughter comes from despair.”

Yes, I apologize for that remark but to me it seems the only explanation. The jokes are so inappropriate I find them shocking. There's a difference between laughing with and at and know what reaction you'll get when you mock at or with someone. This comes off as if the mentally ill aren't even considered as part of the audience. It's about them, not with them.

Life is Beautiful shows empathy. There is no empathy here.

Fun and a note on the times. Pass the Cymbalta.

Fuckin awesome!!!*big fav

Fun to read. *

Multiple personalities develop by being tortured as children. I don't see anything funny in that. All these "jokes" are at the expense of greatly suffering people, including myself. The massive ignorance about this is astonishing. It's llike laughing at a joke about someone dying in a torture chamber.

All the jokes of hearing and seeing things that aren't there are at the expense of schizophrenics, the most vulnerable people in the world, most of the homelesss, who have no ability to tell the difference between reality and fantasy and suffer from hallucinations and paranoia, all told by a jokester with no capacity for empathy at all.

Want to know how unfunny multiple personalities really are? Read my story "Mulltiples"? Read "Bipolar" for my problem closest to home. And then keep laughing.

I have an acquaintance who is a pathological narcissist. May I order a card with a mirror on the front and your message inside: You're the Center of the Universe? Mazel Tov! The beauty part is, he won't get it!

First read the comments, then the piece. Couldn't help it, bless my black heart, I barked out a laugh at "Deepest Sympathy for the Loss of your Imaginary Friend." Life is about looking at ourselves and finding the humor that can bring us through it all. Fave.

I cannot tell you how many Fictionaut people will not speak out against these jokes because of their deep shame over having a mental illness. I can only speak in my own voice and it is clearly not being heard. That's very discouraging.

It's one thing to joke about yourself and quite another to joke at the expense of suffering others who have no recourse to fight for themselves out of shame and social taboos. Roz is not joking about herself, clearly.

Wow. The comments protesting this helped place it on the recommended list.

That crazy algorithm!

Glad I stopped by here after a very hectic day. Hilarious. Thanks!*

Roz, thanks for the laugh. I imagine them as a series of Someecards. :)

okay, this is so not the appropriate place for this, but...

Gloria, you are not the editor of fictionaut, and it is not your job to tell other people what they are allowed to write about and to harangue them at length in the comments on their stories trying to bully them into agreement with you. You don't know anything about Roz or her circumstances.

If you don't like a story, say your piece (or don't) and move on. Twenty comments goes way beyond stating your opinion here. This is abusive behaviour.

Roz, sorry you got hit with the shit stick.

I didn't laugh. I'll leave it at that.

I'm sorry.

THANK YOU FRANKIE

And thanks to everyone who took the trouble to let us know this humor piece gave them a laugh. We appreciate it.

Roz, I understand and respect Gloria's concerns, and we do have some mental health issues in the family. Still, I got a yuk.

That's OK Steven. I'm not really sorry for defending the dignity of the mentally ill at all. It took a toll on me, but I know it raised some consciousness, silent though they feel they have to be due to the Neanderthal climate we live in. It's nothing new.

On behalf of Neanderthals everywhere, I am offended.

Sorry. You're too evolved.

I emailed Gloria about this--basically, what Frankie Sachs said, with a warning. Gloria, it's ok to be offended, and it's ok to say so--but only once.

Lynn: your response made me laugh. Thanks. And Gloria, if after 20 comments about my essay you still dont feel as if you've fully expressed yourself, why not follow Frankie Sach's example and rather than continuing to comment, write a terrific, thought-provoking essay about it? (To read the essay, check out Frankie's blog.)

Betsy Ross - just brilliant.

I did: "Rescue Fantasies." right here on Fictionaut.

I think that written expression is always good & appreciate the craft that went into the above piece. However, I read it with a similar sadness as Gloria. Though I like its wit, it's equivalent with how I'd feel if I read a piece making fun of someone with autism. To spend time reading about the struggles people go through with serious mental diagnoses, or to know someone who has struggled... it would be hard, if not impossible, to write a sarcastic piece without a glimpse of more empathy. Still, write on... writing is good. I think it's worth noting how a piece like this might feel to people who deal with these subjects daily. We wouldn't mock the recent Tornado victims, right? Why mock the mentally ill?

Wow. Food for thought, and thought is always starving, always hungry after a few days without it, hours, even minutes if the mind is commandeered by a forceful outer driver, a real horse reiner. Reading is salvation as are one's own finer thoughts. I find humor not just in Roz's piece but in some of the comments, including Gloria's near the beginning. In fact, Gloria feels disgusted yet the censored topics she broaches as counter-example kick out the bad dwarf or whoever lives in the laughter dome. I also appreciate the more considerate comments. I agree with Gloria and Jennifer that people without empathy may find the laughter too easy in a thoughtless rather than a deep blues sort of way and are in general insensitive toward others and write without heart and that writing is a place that allows expression of that coldness and sometimes coldness is ironic and meant to highlight disagreeable coldness and sometimes it is what writing exists to admit it is in a casual, unskilled way. Roz's pieces are new to me and I would like to read more of them, after reading the story about babysitting and Barbie and stories from the Bible and Torah and atheism. These seem like humorous articles, so far, rather than like short stories, and perhaps are best taken in as a series rather than as a single act of writing for all time. People suffering delusions may actually be helped by a well-motivated gentle reminder of their inclusion in the rest of humanity. I suppose their quest to individuality has gone off the dock and needs a guide pole. A joke may work as guide. Gloria is right, though, there are fish-eating-fish who eat guide poles.

I liked them. I also have a psychology degree and experience working with people who have mental health issues, as well as loved ones who have them. Not sure if that's relevant, but I'm mentioning it just in case. Much less amused with the cracks about Asperger's in the comments, though. Pleased to meet you Roz et al. FAVE

I like this a lot, Roz. I have bipolar disorder, and I don't like when people don't joke about it and treat it too seriously. That's not the way to go. Need to have some laughter regarding mental illnesses. How else would we get through them, you know? We can't keep focusing on the seriousness of depression--that will just create more of it. Big fave.*

Sarah, thanks for the support. "We can't keep focusing on the seriousness of depression -- that will just create more of it." Well put. And much appreciated.

As someone who doesn't suffer from mental illness, but who - in a country where it seems as if 4 out every 5 people are on some kind of medication for whatever random problem they have been diagnosed with by a shrink in the back pocket of a pharmaceutical company - feels increasingly marginalized for not being told that there is something wrong with me, something to explain why I haven't unlocked my unlimited amount of potential and become rich and famous like I was promised by the very same mass culture that is now telling me how sad I am and here is a pill I can take for my sadness (but not before I stick around and watch another commercial for some electronic/digital widget/gadget I don't need ["Do you feel disconnected? Then you should by this product that will make you feel even more disconnected, and when you start to feel even more disconnected, please make sure to ask your doctor for the new Happy Pill on the market, which will make you feel less disconnected and more apt to want tp buy the next product we have in the pipeline, a product that we assure you will expand your disconnection from your fellow"]), I have to say that not only are these funny, but at a time when it seems as if the citizens of the United States have collectively crawled up their own ass, very necessary. Satire is always necessary. When everyone is crazy, no one is crazy.

^ this.

"When everyone is crazy, no one is crazy."

Amen.

Swiftian satire. Love it.

"I have bipolar disorder, and I don't like when people don't joke about it and treat it too seriously." I agree with Sarah.
I'm crazy too, and I find this Hilarious!*

Who is fair game and who is not? It is true, humor and its first cousin satire are frequntly used to demean and since I am a paragon of bad taste I felt obliged to comment.

I am in agreement with Frankie Sachs. And Chris Okum makes a scary point; there are plenty of people out there who seem to have their shit well enough together to take advantage of almost everyone else. We ought to skewer them, but they'd probably sue us all back to the Australian Penal Colony we came from. (Oops)

In any case, I frequently see material on fictionaut I find offensive. I merely ignore it. Snarkiness is the human condition. Get back to me when you figure out the cure. A good start was made by the National Lampoon some years ago in their Unwanted Foreigners issue. They inclded a big, horrid map of the world with every racial ethenic and religious slur located in the appropriate country and noted, "you are going to think this very funny until you find yourself on the map."

In the meantime, I only posted this because I wanted to part of the longest string I've ever seen on fictionaut and BTW I don't think there's a good answer for the issues.

It's possible Zen would work for some of us. Personally, I'm a Druid, we sacrifice humans whose IQs are too high.