Among my collection of fiction is Cavern of Madness. It portrays what it might be like from the inside when your grip on reality slips just a little. The point is to help readers understand what is typically called “mental illness.”
Sadly, unless the hero of my story does not get one of the few genuine scientists in the field as his doctor, he won’t get much help. I rather like the way Dr. Thomas Szasz insists most such trouble is actually a moral failure, not some actually sickness. In other words, regardless how they got there, the person having trouble has stepped off into the Twilight Zone by trying to get away from something obnoxious about reality. They didn’t face the genuine sorrows of life, and their attempts to escape into fantasy aren’t working. I may not agree with Dr. Szasz on treatment, but I certainly prefer his approach to psychotherapy than any other I’ve seen.
Most likely the hero in my story will end up on some brain wasting medication. That’s really quite sad.
Sad when you realize the causes of mental instability among Americans arises from a very badly broken Western Civilization, which is relentlessly materialistic. We have all sorts of hideous poisons in our environment and food delivery system. We have a medical system so utterly perverted by Big Pharma, oppressive mainstream orthodoxy of care and “professional standards,” and government meddling which always demands the worst possible options.
America itself is insane.
