How do you view the psychiatric phenomenon of psychosis? Is psychosis the quintessential stereotype of madness – people so badly affected by a mental illness that they live only in the world of apparent make-believe, where they talk to imaginary friends, view ‘real’ people with morbid suspicion, and worry that the pair of curtains that adorn the window are symbolic of communication from alien races?
If anything, it’s an idea that has been almost romanticised by fiction and the film industry – but if you’re reading this, then the chances are you know that it’s bollocks. All those things can be true of someone suffering from a psychotic episode, but the idea that it is a permanent state that routinely requires a strait jacket and a padded cell is as outdated as it is offensive.
At the Mountains of Madness 