Beautiful Madness
The real-life story of 'Nia' who exchanged beauty for sanity:
"Nia was too beautiful to be in a psychiatric ward. That's what everyone secretly felt, including the blunt, unsentimental nurses. She was willowy and dark-eyed - not just blandly attractive like teenagers can be. Her parents had delayed signing her into the ward on a section for as long as possible. They couldn't bear the thought that their beautiful girl was going mad."
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This article has been heating up quite a bit of blogging. I think many professionals and patients would argue both sides of the conflict. I recall one blogfriend saying we need better medications *and* we need to stretch cultural standards of beauty. I agree with that statement.
BTW, great blog you have here.
Thanks for your comment. I think you might have a blogfriend there who likes to have their cake and eat it!
Still, I'm guessing what people are getting at is this idea that it shouldn't be so bad to be fat. Equally, I suppose it shouldn't be so bad to be mad. Unfortunately madness easily has more social stigma attached to it than fatness.
Perhaps the authors of this article shouldn't have been so surprised that 'Nia' chose to regain her sanity and sacrifice her thinness. Or perhaps they were simply surprised, in this age of extreme image-consciousness, that she didn't mourn the loss of her slenderness as much as they thought she ought to.
Personally, I saw this article as a useful warning of the side-effects of antipsychotic medication, of which many people are not aware.
Thoughts?
More on the letters page of Prospect.