Mental Illness: Debunking Normalcy

‘If you account it wisdom when you are angry to be silent and not to shew it

I do not account that wisdom but folly

Every man’s wisdom is peculiar to his individuality’

-William Blake, Milton: A Poem-

What constitutes being Normal? When is a person considered normal? And what disqualifies someone from being normal?

What engineers term the Gaussian curve statisticians call the normal distribution. It apparently accounts for all natural phenomena in terms of the wealth of their attributes—height, weight, age ad infinitum. Normalcy is considered being at the mean, a paltry 50 percent which is coincidentally the apex of the normal curve, plus a two way inclusion of population members within one standard deviation from the mean. There goes that word again—deviation. The kicker is that if an individual, item, or entity falls three standard deviations away from the mean (about 3.1 percent), they are not considered within normal bounds. They are beyond. acceptable statistical/mathematical ergo social standards. Their traits and behavior are averse to the normal horde and what is considered socially acceptable. Three standard deviations away from the. range beneath the apex and you are not normal, you are considered abnormal.

Normal. Decorum. Consistency. Discipline. Proper behavior. Alignment. Predictability. Accountability. Responsibility. Virtue. Obedience. Docility. Control.

Control at a moment’s notice no wild cards may present. No surprises. No crises, or the appearance of crises to the stricture-prone who is loath to tolerate the very defined deviations and instead anticipate and control every psychosocial dynamic within their ken and ability.

This phenom. This concealment promulgated as etiquette or acceptable behavior. This peddled ideal so tacitly accepted by society. This…….this is normal.

There is no Normal. Nobody is Normal; Normalcy does not Exist………..

What, pray tell, does it mean to be normal? How does one define normal? Normal strikes as bearing a sense of purity. Of consistency. And of synchrony. All highly coordinated, unwavering, and undifferentiated.

An argument may be made for normalcy to be synonymous with homogeneity. Two individuals who think alike, talk similarly, act alike, are inclined to react similarly and make the same decisions. All within a minuscule standard deviation. The question that begs is whether such a phenomenon exists or is liable to exist in the pristine standards it is enforced with.

The truth is that no two individuals think, speak, or act alike to identical proportions. There has yet to be determined purely similar patterns of behavior between various individuals. If being normal is behaving completely alike, then no one fits the bill of being normal. The only argument that can be made is that normalcy is relative, and that deviations in thought, word, speech, and behavior are not only rampant but are the order of the day.

Does it follow then that individuals with mental illness are abnormal. What does it mean to fall three standard deviations beyond the mean? We could elect to ascribe to some manner of psychosocial decorum, but decorum is by its nature a consensus. Neuropsychologically speaking, mental illness symptoms are not necessarily perversions of character. Objectively examined, they are different patterns of behavior. And psychosocial decorum springs heavily from sociocultural norms which are ever changing. Consider such examples as the atheism and LGBQT+ movements, previously shunned but currently accorded their due respect.

Individuals with mental illness are not abnormal by any stretch. To think as such is to eschew from the true meaning of normalcy and confuse it with the truly valid concept at play, homogeneity.

People with mental illness aren’t normal. It is not a laurel any of them desire. Would you rather be normal, or would you prefer to be unique?

https://medium.com/@urizeniczoa/mental-illness-debunking-normalcy-937dcd28b2a8