The Cruelty of a Mental Illness as Meme

Actual mental illness is grubby, sad, gross, dispiriting, destabilizing, undermining, exhausting, unpalatable, ugly, and definitely not politically correct. But people like Serrano have marinated for so long in an online culture about mental illness that treats it as a positive set of charming personality quirks that they’re completely incapable of looking actual madness in the face. I so desperately wish people like that could spend some time in a psychiatric facility. Not some boutique upscale hotel for the Ivy-league grads with self-diagnosed depression and anxiety, but the kind of places where the involuntarily committed are sent after being taken off of the streets.