Week 8_Tianyi Cui_A01

This week’s lecture and readings developed around “mental health”. Though it was a little difficult for me to read the article Fucked Up – I Would Always Rather be Abnormal than Holistic because I took lots of time to check and understand jargons relating to pathology, I was especially attracted by the idea raised by Shana Bulhan Haydock that “the idea should not be to make everything normal, but to defy or challenge norms in every moment.” I totally agree that the concept of “normal” can be widen and the term “new norm” can be introduced. We can look at mental illness from a whole different angle. Why everyone is trying to “fix” people with mental illness and using an intangible standard to judge whether they are “normal” or not?  Haydock spoke for herself that “We actively want to be considered, somehow, some way, ‘normal.’” Mental illness should not be considered as an unacceptable divergence from the standard norm. Instead, the divergence should be embraced, because everyone see things differently, and the world is different in everyone’s eyes. It is unreasonable to force people with mental illness taking drugs to revert them to the so-called “norm” we believe in. According to the author, “practices such as yoga, meditation, acupuncture and herbal treatments” are much healthier ways of dealing with mental illness.

Question:

How should we define the word “normal”? How can we redefine the using of words “neurodivergent” and “neuroatypical”? How can critical psychology challenge the existing so-called “norm”?

Reference:

Haydock, S. B. Fucked Up – I Would Always Rather Be Abnormal Than Holistic. Nine Micro Essays. DSM: Asian American Edition.